I don’t run VPNs at the router level. The speed and latency hit, plus the spambot triggers aren’t worth it for me. This is purely a non-privacy minded preference, mind you, and I’m totally not an expert.
You bring up a good point though. Regardless of what’s running upstream, if my device is running private relay, it all gets bypassed. So I have to disable private relay.
My preference is to run nextdns over DoH, AdGuard locally on iOS + Stop the Madness, and a VPN when I’m feeling sheepish.
I was going to say “you mean, eastern hemisphere times? I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you.”