WireGuard VPN - Peer to Site - Introduction

To help understand the WireGuard concepts, we will show some practical setups that hopefully match many scenarios out there.

This is probably the most common setup for a VPN: connecting a single system to a remote site, and getting access to the remote network β€œas if you were there”.

Where to place the remote WireGuard endpoint in the network will vary a lot depending on the topology. It can be in a firewall box, the router itself, or some random system in the middle of the network.

Here we will cover a simpler case more resembling what a home network could be like:

               public internet
     
                xxxxxx      ppp0 β”Œβ”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”
 β”Œβ”€β”€β”€β”€β”         xx   xxxx      ─── router β”‚
 β”‚    β”œβ”€ppp0  xxx      xx        β””β”€β”€β”€β”¬β”€β”€β”€β”€β”˜
 β”‚    β”‚       xx        x            β”‚         home 10.10.10.0/24
 β”‚    β”‚        xxx    xxx            └───┬─────────┬─────────┐
 β””β”€β”€β”€β”€β”˜          xxxxx                   β”‚         β”‚         β”‚
                                       β”Œβ”€β”΄β”€β”     β”Œβ”€β”΄β”€β”     β”Œβ”€β”΄β”€β”
                                       β”‚   β”‚     β”‚   β”‚     β”‚   β”‚
                                       β”‚pi4β”‚     β”‚NASβ”‚     β”‚...β”‚
                                       β”‚   β”‚     β”‚   β”‚     β”‚   β”‚
                                       β””β”€β”€β”€β”˜     β””β”€β”€β”€β”˜     β””β”€β”€β”€β”˜

This diagram represents a typical simple home network setup. You have a router/modem, usually provided by the ISP (Internet Service Provider), and some internal devices like a Raspberry PI perhaps, a NAS (Network Attached Storage), and some other device.

There are basically two approaches that can be taken here: install WireGuard on the router, or on another system in the home network. We will discuss both in the following sections.

Note that in this scenario the β€œfixed” side, the home network, normally won’t have a WireGuard Endpoint configured, as the peer is typically β€œon the road” and will have a dynamic IP address.

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