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Forum Discussion
RBR50 VPN Setup with OpenVPN Client on Mac
I am trying to set up a VPN server on my RBR50.
After I enable the VPN server on the router (using the default settings), I clicked on the 'For Mac OSX' download button, which did create a folder (titled 'nonwindows') in my Mac downloads folder, and inside that folder were 5 files.
The documentation for the RBR50 (from 2018) indicated using the Tunnelblick app instead of the Tunnelblick app, but I was unable to get that to work. In addition, it appears as though the Tunnelblick app will not work effectively without adding extra extensions and such - and that had issues as well. Could not get Tunnelblick to connect to the Internet (much less my home network).
Therefore, I also downloaded the OpenVPN client and launched it, and the app asked for a configuration file that had a file extension of .ovpn - which was not created when I downloaded the client stuff above.
What "is" interesting is that I also downloaded client configuration information for both Windows and smartphone - and the smartphone download ended up being an .ovpn file! On a whim, I decided to upload that .ovpn file to the OpenVPN client on my Mac - and it worked. I was able to connect to the Internet (using my mobile phone as a hotspot so that I wasn't connecting my Mac to my home).
However, it appears as though the Mac OpenVPN did "not" connect to my RBR50, and thus cannot "see" any of the devices on my home network. Maybe there are some port forwarding rules that I need to have in place "somewhere" so that they get put into the .ovpn file? FYI, I do have port forwarding rules in place for several servers in my home network.
Anyway, does anyone have any ideas on what I might be able to do?
Thanks in advance.
2 Replies
No port forwarding rules are required to make an OpenVPN connection between a device on the internet and the Orbi RBR50 router.
One key is that the .ovpn file must contain a URL that resolves to the public IP address of the router.
One part of configuring OpenVPN is to create an entry in one of three Dynamic DNS services that will track the public IP address of the router whenever the ISP changes it.
client dev tun proto udp remote xxxxxx.mynetgear.com 12973 resolv-retry infinite nobind persist-key persist-tun verb 5 <ca>i.e. xxxxx.mynetgear.com should resolve to the router public IP address. I set verbosity ('verb') to 5 so that the OpenVPN log file will contain more information.
Of course, this all assumes that the router actually HAS a public IP address. (it is not 'hidden' behind an ISP router.)
You are testing OpenVPN the same way I do.
- Disconnect phone from home network.
- Enable WiFi Hot Spot on phone.
- Connect test device to the Hot Spot.
- Activate OpenVPN on the test device.
No port forwarding rules are required to make an OpenVPN connection between a device on the internet and the Orbi RBR50 router.
Assuming of course that you do not double-route
