How to Move PPTP VPN from Windows XP to Router with DD-WRT

Its very easy to move your work PPTP VPN from your Windows XP computer to a wireless router running the dd-wrt firmware. DD-WRT firmware runs on most wired and wireless routers on the market today including the ever popular Linksys wrt54g.

Once your router has the dd-wrt firmware installed make note if the configuration settings you use for your PPTP VPN including username, password, VPN server IP, remote IP subnet mask, and remote IP subnet.

Follow the below steps and your PPTP VPN will be up and rocking in no time.

1. Login:First login to your router that is running dd-wrt.
2. Open VPN Settings: Click the “Services” tab followed by the “VPN” sub tab.
3. Enable PPTP Client: Now click the radial button next to “PPTP Client Options”.
4. Enter PPTP VPN Settings:Now enter all of the information necessary for your VPN to work including the “Server IP”, “Remote Subnet”, “Remote Subnet Mask”, “MPPE Encryption Options”, “User Name”, and “Password”. Below are some examples.
   Server IP: 10.10.10.10
   Remote Subnet: 192.168.47.0
   Remote Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
   MPPE Encryption: mppe required,no40,no56,stateless
   User Name: workuser
   Password: mypassword
   You should not need to change the MTU settings. The MPPE settings make sure that encryption is required at the strongest level of 128-bit. Make sure NAT is enabled.
5. Enable VPN Passthrough:Click the “Security” tab followed by the “VPN Passthrough” sub tab. Select the radial button next to “Enable” for the PPTP Passthrough. This will ensure that your firewall does not block the VPN setup.
6. Save, Apply, and Reboot: Now click the “Save” button followed by the “Apply Settings” button at the bottom. Next click the “Administration” tab and scroll to the bottom and click the “Reboot Router” button.

When the router comes back up the VPN takes a minute or two to set up so be patient. If you need to further troubleshoot you can SSH to the router and start the VPN in debug mode by issuing the below commands from the shell.

Now instead of having to start your VPN all the time from your computer the VPN should stay connected from the router and free up resources on your PC. Any time you need to connect to a computer over the VPN it will be as if the computer is on your local network.

There is a new article discussing more of the constant connection between a WRT600N running dd-wrt as a PPTP client with a direct connection to a Linksys RV016 VPN Router.