What can happen when the home network of a VPN Client exists in the VPN Destination Network?

Question

If the network of someone's home network (Say 192.168.1.1/24) and the network that they vpn into has that same range in it, how can that be handled? I don't mean when the VPN hands out an IP in the same range, but just when that I exists on the network.

I figure it would have to be handled on the client side. But is there a to configure common vpn clients so maybe only the IP of machine itself, and its gateway remain local, and all other requests go over the VPN?

...It seems like it could be possible, maybe by mangling the arp table somehow....

Answer 1

It depends on your routing table, but in general, your local network will override everything.

Your routing table says "these hosts on this network, goes out through this interface using this gateway (or not using a gateway at all)"

By default your LAN network will have routes for 192.168.1.0/24[1]. Taking into account, your default gateway is also more than likely on this network (e.g. 192.168.1.1), if your VPN routes overwrote these routes you'd lose connectivity to your default gateway.

However, you can do one of two things to make it potentially "workable", but it requires manually editing your routing table.

1. Enter in specific static host routes for machines you need access to on your local network. (i.e. route add) and use the more generic network route for your VPN. Obviously, you should need at least need a default gateway route to get access to your VPN.

2. Enter in specific static routes for machines on the foreign VPN network and leave the generic network route for machines on the local LAN.

2 is the more common scenario I've seen in situations where there is a conflict. Of course, you're better off not choosing 192.168/16 for any office network or VPN because of the proliferation of that on home network devices.

[1] As an aside it's more appropiate to use the network number when using CIDR as opposed to a host.