Ask HN: Why isn't using your home network as a VPN more common?

Re:Ask HN: Why isn't using your home network as a VPN more c... by JohnFen on Thursday March 19, 2026 @11:08AM (#47440796)

I've been doing this for many years, and I don't know why it's not more common. The most common thing I hear when I explain to people, though, is they don't see the point if the VPN isn't shielding your traffic from your home's ISP.

I think that just speaks to people thinking that's the only use case for a VPN, probably because of all the marketing from VPN service providers.

I originally set it up in order to be able to funnel all of my smartphone traffic through my home network so my firewall rules apply to my phone as well. Since then, though, I've discovered numerous other advantages.

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Re:Ask HN: Why isn't using your home network as a VPN more c... by hjconstas on Thursday March 19, 2026 @11:41AM (#47441324)

Yeah I see that. But for me it’s more about everything just working. What kind of firewall rules do you have? Maybe that's not the best question to ask on the open internet haha.

I'm coming at it from a more basic NPC angle after ChatGPT started blocking VPN IP traffic. So I'd love to hear a more nuanced angle.

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Re:Ask HN: Why isn't using your home network as a VPN more c... by JohnFen on Thursday March 19, 2026 @02:29PM (#47443754)

The part of my firewall setup I most wanted to extend to my smartphone was my policy of whitelisting outgoing communications. I don't want applications to be able to talk to the outside world without me explicitly allowing it, so I block all outgoing communications by default and whitelist specific things as needed.

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