I may be way off base here, maybe I am not understanding what the point of a VPN is. It was my understanding that connecting to your VPN will give you a secure way to expose ALL of your network to a remote computer. At least, that was my understanding of the purpose of VPN.
I set up a simple VPN server using pptpd on Debian, configured a username and password, etc. and then forwarded port 1723 TCP in my router. Then to test the VPN, I connected my laptop to the Internet by tethering to my phone and then established a connection to the VPN. My laptop connected just fine, but when I try to connect to any of the devices or services on my local network I get nothing. no ping, no file sharing, no ssh, nothing...
What exactly am I doing wrong?