Pfsense VPN

[Gordon Shumway]

I have set up Pfsense VPN in my home for my own personal use. When away from home using my mobile phone and authenticated through the VPN I can reach everything on my home network but when I launch the Lutron app it hangs and says "Connection Failed". What am I missing? Does anyone have any experience configuring Pfsense, or any VPN, to work with Lutron? Thanks.GS

[evankirkhart]

I don’t mess with Pfsense, but I do install Ubiquiti hardware. My understanding is that L2TP VPN does not forward multicast, which will prevent the app from discovering the bridge on the network. I remember that there was some way to get multicast over a certain kind of VLAN but I don’t remember anything other than that. <br><br>

Why would you want to do this? You should have your phone logged into your Lutron account which will discover your system through the cloud, making VPN unnecessary.

[Gordon Shumway]

Why do I want to do this? Lack of trust in other organizations to "protect" my data/network. I have read too many anecdotes proving that technology is often designed for convenience, in haste, and not typically with security in mind. For instance, I have several network cameras from multiple vendors that despite having the "check for update" box turned off, they constantly try to connect to websites in China. Why? At least with a firewall and VPN I control what "phones home" with information from my network. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy technology but I believe it should have its limits. Your "broadcast" comment reminded me that I had seen another article that suggested I needed to run another app to help me connect across the networks from VPN to home. I'll ask Teh Google about it. Thanks.p.s. The Caseta Bridge is pretty chatty, too. I blocked all of its outgoing traffic and it quit working after a few days. Then I opened NTP and now it works fine on the home network. Hmmm, so why did it need the other ports open?

[Gordon Shumway]

Does anyone have any experience with VPN and the Smart Bridge "pro" version?

[Gordon Shumway]

So with all my grand ideas of adding a separate VLAN or playing with firewall rules in the end the simplest solution was the best. I just plugged an unused wifi router into a port on my switch which causes it to provide DHCP on a separate subnet. To top it off I used that 2nd router's Guest wifi for the Lutron bridge. Problem solved.

[DominikHoffmann]

I configured my pfSense box with OpenVPN and the Viscosity client with the “tap” option, which does forward multicast to the VPN client. Maybe that would work for you;

[DavidL]

We do it this way: Your iphone / android phone browser > Cellular data (or Wifi) > PFSense VPN service > your automation controller (like myServer) > Caseta Pro Hub > Caseta lighting devices.