hi all.

Id like to be able to set up a vip at home, both for privacy and to get around some geoblocks.

My current network has a Spark supplied Huawei HG659b router in a cupboard that's connected to the Chorus ONT (fibre 100), then to a switch, and then via patch panel and cat 6 cabling to lan ports throughout the house. theres 2 x lan ports in every room. in 4 of the rooms i have wifi access points (airport extremes and expresses for wifi ... (the expresses are mainly for the airplay of music vs 'just' wifi access).

The wifi on the huawei is turned off as it was flaky, and I didn't need it. My laptops, devices, etc, seemed to be able to move from access point to access point as long as they were all apple, but moving from the 'huawei' room to a different room never seemed to work.

So, the VPN........  the huawei won't do VPN, apparently, and whilst I have set up and installed vpn software on a couple devices, and have changed the dns on the apple tv to access other country 'media' within existing apps, I can't access any other app stores. to do this, apparently, ill need to install the vpn further up the chain - i.e. on a router, not on the atv. And when / if I do this, I can no longer access NZ stuff like TV3 or Lightbox, unless I airplay, which gets annoying when I'm trying to watch tv and do laptop stuff at the same time.

Id like to add a second router, one that has gigabit lan, but doesnt need wifi. Id probably like this to be able to run a third party firmware like Tomato or DD WRT as I Imagine Ill be futzing with its settings a bit. It doesn't need to do much apart from be a good router, and hopefully allow me to store different vpn settings and switch between them easily. Anyone have recommendations?

And then I can't decide where to site it within the topology. If I put it in the cupboard with the other router, switch, and patch panel, and use the patch panel judiciously (i.e. bypassing the switch) Im guessing I can use lan ports in different rooms to differentiate between the 'foreign' router and the NZ one. Bearing in mind the laptops can use the vpn client anyway, and I don't care about phones and tablets being in 'new zealand'.... But maybe its just easier to locate it after the switch in the room where it will be used most and plug the ATV into that? what will work best from a not-buggy POV? and what settings would I put into the two different routers to make this work