I run the network between four physical rural sites. One is the main office, two satellite offices and one home worker (me!)

This has previous been kept up by using DG834's throughout each site, which each have a nice VPN pointy-clicky setup. Not knowing much about VPN this was a blessing.

However... All is not good in the DG834 garden. Successive models have increased the heat output of the modems and now we're at v.4 this often results in quite unstable boxes. I have had a frustrating time setting everything just so, and by the next morning it had dropped a link. Resetting the main site's dg834 was the only way for the VPN's to re-connect. I took some advice (Thanks, Totalgaz) and bought a Draytek 2820. Not cheap but widely used. Loads and loads of features, including failover to a second connection, loads of tweaks and of course, vpns.

However - making the DG834 in two of the remote sites was not simple. The home worker was fairly straight forward, Windows 7's built-in vpn system had me going in five minutes, something I never got working with the Netgears.

So, anyway, to save others quite a lot of hassle, I have some setup pictures of both ends. This works for me, it might work for you. At least it will show you it is possible!

Firstly, set up the server first - the 2820. This is on the subnet 10.0.0.0/24 with the ip 10.0.0.202

The client's subnet is 10.0.3.0/24 (these do need to be different)

Both the "Server IP" and "Peer VPN Server IP" should be the client's public IP. (The blacked out bits)

Ok, now set up the client next.

The Address data should be the public IP of the Draytek (server)
The pre-shared key should be the password you set in the Draytek too (Remember, case sensitive!)

Now either site back, or hammer the Netgear's VPN connect button if you're impatient. Hopefully both ends will show a link!

Edit: This is not a perfect solution. The VPN tunnels reset quite often, although generally quick to re-establish. Unfortunately, it seems that after a number of these resets (probably hundreds), the Netgears stop trying. The logs stop showing attempts to re-establish and the only way to fix them is to restart the modem. Not ideal.