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Forum Discussion
Orbi VPN does not change IP
I've looked through many threads regarding this topic but none of the threads have a final answer; they're all abandoned.
I have set up DDNS (NoIP.com), and set up VPN with the "all internet and home traffic" option checked. Downloaded the Mac config files, and installed them into my TunnelBlick. In TunnelBlick, I also set the option to "route all IPv4 traffic thru VPN". I then tested out the VPN connection by tethering to my phone's internet to see if I can access my home network.
Results:
- I can access my printer via my phone's tethered internet.
- My public IP (according to IPChiken) DID NOT CHANGE. And that is my main purpose of setting up the VPN
- I will travel soon so I want to stream content that's only available at my home's geolocation. So I'm looking to set up a VPN where my public IP will be the same as if I'm in my own home.
TLDR:
I have tried all your usual suspected settings, e.g. click on "all internet and home traffic" in the Orbi VPN settings, and "route all IPv4 traffic thru VPN" in TunnelBlick, and also tested out the VPN via a phone tethered connection. I can access my home printer but my public IP did not change.
Any advice will be appreciated! Thank you in advance!
5 Replies
I do not trust the chicken. Please try again with a different web site.
I use OpenVPN to administer two Orbi systems. I did the test you described:
- Disconnect phone from WiFi to use cellular data
- Open Hot Spot on phone
- Connect laptop to Hot Spot and use IPChiken to learn IP address of phone
- Changed laptop to OpenVPN connected to my home Orbi.
- IPChik says the public IP address remains the same! (WTF???)
- Changed to whatismyipaddress.com. NOW my public IP is the same as my home Orbi.
- I am one cynical old bugger, but I have a suspicion that the chicken is reading out of browser cache, has left a cookie, or something. Two requests from the same browser a few minutes apart. What could have changed???
This use of OpenVPN to appear to be somewhere else is well known. Aside from bandwidth/latency issues it should work.
I have no apples, so my experiment was done using Windows.
Can you give this another try and check the public IP against several test sites?
Yep, I actually did check with both whatsmyip and ipchicken, just was too lazy to type. And it doesn't read the cache because as soon as I switch the connection from tether back to my home's wifi, Ipchicken and whatsmyip changed immediately, not minutes apart, but immediately as soon as i hit refresh.
The ultimate litmus test was giving the configs to my family overseas to see if they can watch the shows. They were blocked due to geolocation.
Albeit this is on a mac and via TunnelBlick. I've seen in other threads that other ppl have success with the confs on mobile/windows, too bad I need it to work on a mac.
Sorry for blaming the chicken, although it looked strange to me.
The default OpenVPN for Windows is a tun connection. For everything else, it is a tap connection. I have no idea what tunnelblik assumes. There are tons of web sites explaining the difference between them, pros and cons, etc.
Have done some more testing. Have now verified that Orbi OpenVPN will direct ordinary web requests through the router WAN port which will give them the public IP of the router. Verified by whatismyip.com, nordvpn.com, and the IPchiken:
- Windows 10
- Mint Linux
- Android phone
I notice that MacOS recommends tunnelblick, which iPad and iPhone use OpenVPN from the app store. Is the failure you are observing on both platforms or only one?
