[RKDinOKC]

Next door neighbor turns his cable modem/router off when he is not getting on the internet.

If you have a router based VPN, software is on the router not the computer. It will not allow connections your devices don't initiate. Like NAT with an extra step of obfuscation at the VPN provider, ie your router only accepts packets from the VPN provider specifically. Connections from anywhere except the VPN to your public IP are dropped.

I have a home business connection with static IPs and the only devices not behind my NAT router/firewall are firewall hardened servers that only allow access to sepecific ports/services.