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KngDa's avatar
KngDa
Aspirant
Nov 10, 2025

OpenVPN connects to router when clients on Ethernet but not on Wifi

I am having difficulty getting OpenVPN to work to connect to my RS300 router with my Windows 11 computers. I have a Dell XPS 16 9640 and a Microsoft Surface Pro 2103 both running Windows 11 Pro. Both computers have the same issue. The router is a Netgear Nighthawk RS300 v 1.0.5.18. The client computers are running OpenVPN 2.6.14 and GUI 11.55.0.0

I want to connect to the RS300 "remote" LAN via the VPN tunnel and the internet through the local LAN at the client location. This works perfectly as long as the client computers are connected to their local LAN via a hardwired Ethernet connection. If the client computers are connected with a WI-fi connection (which works perfectly without the VPN) on the same local network, there are issues. The VPN still connects properly. The router status shows the active VPN connection is successful. File explorer shows the remote LAN devices properly. However, none of the 3 browsers I have tried can access devices on the remote LAN or access the internet. Although not a complete test, the same thing happens when trying to us a public WI-fi connection at a different location. I have tried the usual things. I run the Open VPN as administrator. I have tried changing the adapter metric, placing the various Wi-fi, Ethernet and VPN adapters in various priorities. I have disabled the firewall. There is no subnet overlap. At this point, I am out of ideas.

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