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BR500 VPN and IPSec Example w/Open Source
Since the BR500 supposedly has VPN Support for both OpenVPN and now IPSec (same underlying protocol, more options), I was wondering if anyone has successfully gotten any Linux with open source software (e.g., OpenVPN, Openswan, etc., from command line) to work with the BR500?
I was unsuccessful in getting the "out-of-the-box" OpenVPN working with any of my Mac computers, so I have not yet started experimenting with Linux OpenVPN, but before I do, I would be interested in knowing if anyone out there was successful and can offer any advice?
The only VPN that I was ever able to get working with the BR500 was Insight, but I'm paying mouthly $ for that, and they don't yet have a Linux solution. When I opened a ticket about Linux VPN, I was basically told that it was a good idea and that other people have suggested it, but NETGEAR made no committment about every doing anything about it.
So anyone out there who is more fluent in these things than me able to figure it out?
Thanks in advance!
Just an FYI that I finally got OpenVPN working on my BR500 ... and although I am not 100% sure what the root cause was, I think it was just that my router was "confused" (I'm using that term in a "technical" way).
Previously, I tried three (3) separate OpenVPN clients, and all would just hang a 'connecting', and tunnelblick would explicitly show data being sent but no data received.
So what did I do to get it working? I went to the OpenVPN page of the BR500 web GUI, changed ports from 12973 (TUN) /12974 (TAP) to different ports (I tried 1194/1195), changed it from UDP to TCP, could briefly telnet to those ports from an external server, changed it back to UDP and 12973 / 12974, and voila!, my prior OpenVPN software install (previously not working) on my (remote) Mac started working! I can only conclude that something was "confused" (technical term), and that I "un-confused" it by "playing" with the ports and protocol, which must have reset something in the router configuration. [No doubt any Netgear engineers reading this are now cringing by this description.]
In fairness, the very, very, very first time I tried to turn OpenVPN on via the BR500 web GUI, it just kinda hung ... this was several firmware releases go ... I left it for about 5 minutes with the "spinning circle" ... and then did a reboot of the rouer (closed the web browser, opened a new web brower, and re-booted from the Dashboard page of the BR500 web GUI ... no, I did NOT simply pull the plug!). I think that might have been what originally "confused" it, although in fairness, all I did to get the 5+ minute spinning circle before rebooting the router was click the 'Open VPN Service' checkbox in the web GUI, and then click 'Apply' (again, this was several firmware releases ago ... although simply installing newer firmware releases did NOT fix my problem ... it appears that "playing" with the ports and protocols is what did it). [Any Netgear engineer still reading this is no doubt cringing even more at me rebooting, but more than 5 minutes of a spinning circle exceeds my patience ... and yes, I did time it].
For those keeping track of my numerous (!) posts complaining about the BR500, in addition to getting my Mac to connect to my BR500 via OpenVPN, I also successfully got my Linux cloud server connecting to my BR500 via OpenVPN. I simply installed the OpenVPN software (yum install on CentOS 7), downloaded the 'iPhone' configuration (ovpn) file from the BR500, uploaded it to my Linux server, and then started OpenVPN from the Linux command line:
$ sudo openvpn --config smart_phone.ovpn --daemon
and volia!, my Linux cloud server can now talk to my local (LAN) servers behind the BR500.
So I now have NO OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS on my BR500. The rabbit hole I previously got lost down was connecting to the Insight service and configurating Insight Instant VPN for additional $ ... after that, I had numerous other problems (see my earlier posts if you care what problems), but my BR500 has been stable since disconnecting from the Insight service, and I now have OpenVPN working, so I'm a happy camper! :-)
Thanks to all the other customers on this forum and Netgear engineers who made suggestions and eventually got me here (along with a bit of trial-n-error along the way!).
I'm sharing all of this in the hopes that it may (could? possibly?) help anyone else, and I invite anyone else struggling with the BR500 to contact me for further clarification on any of this, if you so desire.
But mostly I want to get the emotional satisfacton of clicking the 'Solved' button on one of my own posts .... ;-)
11 Replies
dfilip wrote:Since the BR500 supposedly has VPN Support for both OpenVPN and now IPSec (same underlying protocol, more options)
No way, not the same at all. IPSec is IPSec, and OpenVPN is based on SSL. If that's not clear it will be a hard learning curve. For your convenience:
OpenVPN (MacOS): NETGEAR Insight Instant VPN Router BR500 User Manual, p.131 ff "Install the OpenVPN client utility and VPN configuration files on a Mac" (using Tunnelblick) - works for my customers as documented.
IPSec: How do I set up a site-to-site IPSec VPN on my NETGEAR BR500 Business Router? - works for us.
Hello,
You'll need to export the OpenVPN file from the BR500 and import it in the OpenVPN client setup on your Linux environment. What Linux setup are you using? If you are using Ubuntu theres some guides on the Ubuntu site I can send over to walk you through the process.
Thanks, I am trying to get this working from an AWS EC2 cloud server, which as far as I can tell looks a lot like CentOS 7 (rpm & yum, /etc/sysconfig, systemctl, etc.). I have a lot of experince in the CentOS / Redhat Fedora world, less in Ubuntu, but can probably translate.
If you have some instructions for Ubuntu, I can probably make sense of that. The only limitation is that I have command line only access to the server, no GUI.
I could never get the latest tunnelblick workng on any of my Macs, at least not on Mojave, which did throw up a few warning messages when I installed it. It would just hang at 'Conecting' and not get any further, and nothing in the BR500 log. I did not set up Dynamic DNS on the BR500, which looked like it was optional, but in the end I just gave up and paid $$ to use Insight VPN. But I understand that is not an option for Linux currently.
That was also with firmware 5.5.0.1. I have since upgraded to 5.6.0.1. And I never tried using a Dyanmic DNS, although someone I was working with @ NETGEAR said that they had gotten it to work on their Mac running Mojave and the NETGEAR DynDNS. [I had recently installed the BR500 at the time, had a business trip in 2 days, so I went with Insight VPN just to get something working quickly and reliably, after spending a few days trying OpenVPN an tunnelblick without success.]
My question is what OpenVPN configuration do I need to download from the BR500 for use with Linux? Should I try using the Mac configuration again? Or one of the mobile options? I know that macOS is sorta/kinda like FreeBSD (but different in a lot of ways).
My problem with the IPSec instructions is that I am not familiar enough to know what values to use on the router. For example, I have detailed instructions for installing Libreswan (formerly Openswan) from the RedHat portal (sec-securing_virtual_private_networks), but I'm not quite sure on how to configure the BR500 side of things.
Thanks in advance for any OpenVPN Linux <=> BR500 instructions you can provide. Once I can get this running on Linux, I'll go back and re-try macOS again. But the lack of any useful information in the BR500 log made it difficult to troubleshoot.
Reviewing some of the documentation on the Ubuntu side you can use easy-open vpn which is straight forward:
https://docs.ubuntu.com/core/en/stacks/network/easy-openvpn/docs/openvpn-client-setup
You will need the ovpn file which can be downloaded from the "smartphone" button in the BR500 OpenVPN local interface and place in the home directory path.
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