VPN works, but public IP doesnt seem tunneled through (RBK50)

Hi,

Thanks for your answers.  I went over every line of your message and provided extensive info🙂 Therefore it is a long message.  Thanks for your time.

I am an IT professional.  Have 6 years of programming, 6 years of business analysis and 6 years of it project management experience under my belt.  Not a network expert at all, but have a basic understanding of NAT, DNS, Network Masks etc.

To test the VPN, I turn off wifi on my phone.  

I verify that I get a new public IP from the cell provider, e.g.84.241.xxx.yyyy

I openVPN app on the phone, I enable the VPN connection.

With the current setting (All sites on the Internet & Home Network selected) thats the last meaningful thing I can do on the phone.

From this point on, nothing is accessible, neither google.com nor 192.168.1.1 (orbit admin)

At the same time, I go to the ORBI logs.  

There I can see that the openVPN was successful: [OpenVPN, connection successfully] from remote IP address: 84.241.xxx.yyyy

Therefore I think the router is accessible from the internet.

When "automatic" was selected instead of "All sites on the Internet & Home Network", and the VPN worked, I could access orbi admin page.  whats strange now is that even this doesnt work.

i had not enabled remote access before, in order not to run into other issues.  

I had enjoyed the idea of being able to do this through the vpn.  

But upon your message, i enabled it.  

I closed the VPN on my phone.  

Typed in “https://myname.mynetgear.com:8444” -i customised the port just in case-.  

Safari didnt even let me connect to this site “connection is not private”. 

chrome also didn’t want me to go to this site.  but at least I could insist to proceed to the site.  

ORBI said “another admin is logged in - yes, the admin page was open in my mac- and it will have to be kicked out”.  

I said “yes, please”. 

And I could see the admin page.

So yes.  I can do remote management (although the browsers don’t like its security).

from logs:  [remote login] from source 84.241.xxx.yyy 

Next step for me was to disable the remote management.  

I didn’t have to re-login as admin (that what the message said during the remote management experiment - another issue?) 

no, i don’t have any of my browsers remember orbi admin page credentials. 🙂

After the remote management is turned off, I could no longer do vpn on my phone now.  I hanged during “waiting for server” step.

I deleted and re-downloaded the opvn file from ORBI.  Now it connects but still, although “automatic” is selected, I can no longer go to 192.168.1.1.

I don’t have windows machines that I have admin rights to.

The macs I have are inside the house so testing VPN with them is moot.

Since the instructions consisted of 3 steps with DDNS and 3 steps with VPN, I didn’t watch any movies.  I will watch the video in your link today, in case there is something that i miss.

One more important detail:  

I have a box from my internet provider(KPN).  it has my public ip on one side and 192.168.2.X on the other.

I turned off its wifi capabilities.  

The only thing connected to this box -with a cable- is ORBI.  

I arranged so that ORBI has DHCP Static IP - Using MacADDRESS:  192.168.2.100.  

Furthermore, I enabled DMZ setting for 192.168.2.100 on the KPN Box.

I expect any public traffic to it hitting the ORBI box.

In my earlier attempts I tried to do this with port forwarding.  It worked for a while then it stopped.  

So I shifted to the DMZ option. 

As the remote management test shows, this seems to be working.

However lets look at the ORBI now.

- DDNS points to my public IP.  Public IP hits KPN box.  KPN Box (LAN IP:  192.168.2.254) (through DMZ setting) sends everything to 192.162.2.100 (Public side of ORBI).  ORBI’s LAN side is 192.168.1.X (x=1 being orbi itself)

- When I check my phone - when the VPN is connected (but no traffic is passing through)

server is myname.mynetgear.com (check)

server ip is my public ip (check)

but VPN IPv4 is 192.168.2.2.  So I am on the KPN BOX space, not the ORBI space.

This might be the issue.  But I don’t know how to solve this problem.  I thought the DMZ setting on the KPN box would solve it but no.

So whats the suggested way to VPN, when ORBI is behind a consumer grade modem/router (when the wifi is turned off and ORBI is being used for it)

Many Thanks