Interesting how people are asking "why the laptop", its not clear from the picture but the laptop has a console cable plugged into the router allowing me to have a "physical" presence if for some reason the VPN tunnel fails and I need to access the router, also Team Viewer is installed which again is just in case there is a VPN or Telnet/SSH problem (Basically Im a tinkering bastard and sometimes mess things up).
I still don't get what's the laptop for. Why would you need VPN to access the router? Even if VPN connection fails you would still have access to router through connection without VPN, on regular port. The only time you'll ever need RS-232 cable to access the router is during the initial setup, no mater how much tinkering you do it's just not right to have laptop close to the router. People are trying to tell you out of good intentions that if for some reason you need to have them close you are doing something wrong. Just my 0.00000002 BTC.
I think you may have miss read that fact this setup is 30 miles away from my house. Without a connection via VPN tunnel from my house to the location of the miners, I would have no access what so ever, other than using Team Viewer through the laptop. Team Viewer on the laptop is backup access, also there are a select few commands that cant be done via tenet or SSH and you need console access.
