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dishbai's avatar
dishbai
Aspirant
Oct 28, 2022

Cannot connect to Open VPN on RBR350

Just picked up an RBR350 set. Everything's installed fine so far, speeds are great. However I'm struggling to get the Open VPN working.   Have set up an account with no-ip, which all seems to be wo...
CrimpOn's avatar
CrimpOn
Guru
Oct 28, 2022
dishbai wrote:

when I try and connect (whether via mobile data or connected on the same wifi), no joy. I also tried to manually override the DDNS server with the WAN IP address, but again, no joy. I can see from the Open VPN app log that its just timing out when it tries to connect.

OpenVPN will not connect when the client device is on the Orbi LAN.  The router is waiting for connections on the WAN port and will not accept a connection from the LAN side.

 

The default setting for OpenVPN is to use UDP rather than TCP to avoid the overhead of TCP: Today's internet is so reliable that missed packets are less of a concern than effiiency.

Here is a picture of my OpenVPN settings:

Because it uses UDP, any of the "Are ports open?" web site will not report that OpenVPN is running.  One experiment you can try is to change OpenVPN to use TCP.  After selecting "Apply", download a new copy of the .ovpn file to the iPhone.  Then, connect to a test site, such as Shields Up!, https://www.grc.com/shieldsup and verify:

  • That the public IP address is what it should be, and
  • That TCP ports 12973 and 12974 are open.