NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.

Forum Discussion

p3hndrx's avatar
p3hndrx
Aspirant
Apr 09, 2018
Solved

HMAC Authentication Errors (via VPN)

Greetings---

I have a Nighthawk X4 (R7500), and have enabled the VPN Service per this article:
https://kb.netgear.com/25389/Enabling-VPN-service-on-a-Nighthawk-router-using-a-MAC-OS-computer

 

Everything connects fine, but I get the following errors:

2018-04-09 12:59:54 Authenticate/Decrypt packet error: packet HMAC authentication failed

2018-04-09 12:59:54 Authenticate/Decrypt packet error: packet HMAC authentication failed

 

(repeated)...

I am able to access resources on my local network, but the connection is VERY slow.
Services like RDP are impossible to use.

My config:
client
dev tap
proto udp
sndbuf 393216
rcvbuf 393216
;dev-node NETGEAR-VPN
remote xxxx.xxxxx.net12974
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
ca ca.crt
cert client.crt
key client.key
;remote-cert-tls server
cipher AES-128-CBC
comp-lzo
verb 0


  • I resolved this by switching to TCP Mode and redownloading the openvpn config.

    The biggest differences were:
    client
    dev tap
    proto tcp
    sndbuf 0
    rcvbuf 0
    [...]

2 Replies

  • More info:

    It looks like I get a connection and I am able to see UDP RW packets correctly.
    I am able to connect to the router itself via http (e.g. 10.0.0.1), but it generates the HMAC authentication messages and moves VERY slowly.
    I am able to connect to my local workstations via RDP, but it is very very slow.

    For a test, I forwarded RDP ports and it moves very quickly/normally.
    So it appears that there is something lost in the decryption? overhead?

    • p3hndrx's avatar
      p3hndrx
      Aspirant

      I resolved this by switching to TCP Mode and redownloading the openvpn config.

      The biggest differences were:
      client
      dev tap
      proto tcp
      sndbuf 0
      rcvbuf 0
      [...]