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VPN Primer for Noobs

What VPN Solution are you using?

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Superdon

Superdon

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Well finished off installing the cam's today and tidied everything up. Then reset my old Synology app and started having a play with surveillance station and also setting up the VPN.

Struggled for a bit and then realise that Synology has its own firewall and needed to open the right port there as well as.on the router. Finally managed to get a connection and worked great. Then after about 15 minutes. I was logged out and couldn't log acknowledge in again!???

So had a play around and rest things and managed to eventually get a connection again. And again.....after about 10 mins or so I was disconnected and cannot get back in again?????

Any ideas what's going on? I made no changes at all whilst connected to the VPN. I was simply connecting to the network via VPN on the openvpn app on my phone.
 
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DavidDavid

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I have to check the Force AES-CBC certificates in the preferences settings of my open VPN app. You could give that a try
 
Superdon

Superdon

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DavidDavid said:
I have to check the Force AES-CBC certificates in the preferences settings of my open VPN app. You could give that a try
Click to expand...
Thanks. Tried that and it didn't help. When I spotted your post I was reading some other suggested setting for the app and I tried a couple of those. Then....I was back in. I pretty much immediately disconnected, then tried to connect.again without any more changes....and now can't get in again!!!

Its very irritating :)
 
Superdon

Superdon

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Still haven't been able to connect again :( tried loads of things, restarted routers, NAS, etc.

Its ridiculous because everything is as it was when I could connect, so haven't a clue where to go with it now.
 
Superdon

Superdon

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Been working on this for hours...

I am now using openvpn for android, which seems to give more info on the logs. I was finding I was get Auth errors despite knowing the user and pass were correct.

I have played with everything. I then started.playing on my router. I found the MTU setting (default 1500). If I dropped this to 1400, I could then connect to the VPN!??? But if I disconnect and try and connect again I get the Auth errors again.

I then have to log into the router, change MTU back to 1500, then back to 1400 before I can connect VPN again. But again after disconnect I have to go through all that again.

Anyway ideas any VPN experts?
 
Kitsap

Kitsap

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I am far from a VPN expert but I can tell you my story.

Using Open VPN on Android to connect to a Netgear R7000 router.

Had a working and successful connection with gDMSS for the past couple of months. Last week there was an update for Open VPN for Android and it killed my connection.

There have been daily updates to the Open VPN for Android application and it is now up to 1.1.24 and my connection works fine today and appears to be stable.

Poking around on the Open VPN and Netgear forums I can put together that Open VPN stopped allowing use of SSL certificates using MD5. The MD5 algorithm is used by the stock firmware on Netgear routers.

It appears Open VPN blinked and the recent update restores use of the MD5 certificates for the time being. Open VPN has stated support of the MD5 certificates will be halted in April 2018.

Stay tuned as the internet changes. Netgear appears to have fallen off of the wagon regarding firmware updates for this and other Wi-Fi security issues.

After the changes, I uninstalled the Open VPN application for Android and did a clean install with configuration file import. I never did make any changes on the router to try to fix the problem.
 
Superdon

Superdon

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Thanks. Works brilliantly when it connects. Not sure why I haven't sorted it before.

Just need to get it stable!!

I am pretty sure it's the router (virgin media superhub 3) as it seems lots of people having problems with it and VPNs.
 
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t84a

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This is a great thread, however, it would be nice if there were one that tells you how to set up the various apps. I'm trying to set up OpenVPN for Android but am not having much success. I have Untangle and have set that up and downloaded rge .ovpn and .conf files to my phone. When I try to execute, I just get a screen full of errors.
 
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Probird79

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t84a said:
This is a great thread, however, it would be nice if there were one that tells you how to set up the various apps. I'm trying to set up OpenVPN for Android but am not having much success. I have Untangle and have set that up and downloaded rge .ovpn and .conf files to my phone. When I try to execute, I just get a screen full of errors.
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All you do is export your .ovpn file from your router then save it to your phone. Open OpenVPN app on your phone and tap the menu button at the top right (3 dots), select import, then select Import Profile from SD card and choose the .ovpn file. That's it.
 
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t84a

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Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, that's what I did but no success.
 
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Probird79

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t84a said:
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, that's what I did but no success.
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Can you post your router settings for your VPN server? Have you tried another .ovpn file? Maybe the one you tried is corrupt.
 
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t84a

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I think I have it. I had to move the keys in the same directory as the ovpn file. Thanks for replying.
 
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Probird79

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GKL said:
Tried adjusting those settings, still can't connect to my windows phone L2TP client, I was getting error 720 before adjusting those settings, now I'm getting error 1460 (on my phone).

I'm not giving up on VPN, I'll keep researching and trying different settings, but this seems like it might be something that might take me weeks or even months before I finally get it working, if I cant get it working soon I might have to settle for using Hikvision's Hik-connect and their iVMS-4500 phone app until I can eventually figure out how to get a VPN connection to my phone.
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I watched a tutorial on Softether and it seems straight forward. If Roger and you can't figure it out let me know and I can try to help. It shouldn't take too long.
 
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