Is pfSense appropriate for my desired use case?
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My current home network consists of Internet from my ISP connected to a modem which is connected to an Asus RT‑AC56R wireless router. This router does everything you would expect a $75 USD consumer router to do.
I just got an Intel NUC that I plan to run ESXi on with a few VMs (not more than 5). One VM will be a git server that I plan to use privately on my LAN.
I would like to add VPN functionality to my network i.e. be able to be at a coffee shop or other location with wifi and be able to "dial in" to my home network so I can access the git server and other services on the other VMs. What I wouldn't be doing is using the VPN to browse the web using my home connection (I'm afraid its too slow, at 6 Mbps upload speed. Please correct me if I'm wrong).
The typical home pfsense setup (for an Intel NUC) I've seen browsing around consists of using a NUC with two NICs as a router with one NIC connecting to the modem and the other connecting to a switch and/or wireless access point (which would now be my existing Asus wireless "router"). Without buying a dedicated router-in-a-box to put pfsense on, I imagine pfsense would run in a VM within ESXi, alongside my other VMs.
My question is: Is the above setup my only option, to do what I want to do? That is, set up VPN for my network. I've always been happy with my current Asus wireless router's performance and I don't know what more I would gain as well as use with pfsense taking over all of the Asus' wireless router current functionality.
Possibly helpful additional info:
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My internet connection is a residential account with a dynamic IP address.
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I just bought a domain from namecheap, so I was hoping to be able to leverage that with a new VPN set up, if possible.
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I see that OpenVPN isn't natively supported by my laptop (Mac). I would prefer not to install and use a third party VPN client on my Mac, so I would like to use a IKEv2 connection.
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I would to try out to install ASUSWRT-Merlin or something likes DD-WRT or OpenWRT and be happy with the AC WiFi.