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Forum Discussion

Crash_HI's avatar
May 21, 2021

Can't connect via VPN "The VPN Group list is empty"

Hi,

Our user cannot connect via VPN. The client says:

 

"The VPN Group list is empty"

 

The VPN group and user are correctly listed in the Insight web site. I tried removing and re-adding the user.

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated,

 

John

 

 

14 Replies

  • DamianM's avatar
    DamianM
    NETGEAR Moderator

    Hello Crash_HI,

     

    welcome to the NETGEAR community!

     

    I would like to ask you to restart your devices so that they can re-establish the connection. Our engineers have applied a fix and it should work fine after the restart.

     

    Regards,
    DamianM
    NETGEAR team

    • Crash_HI's avatar
      Crash_HI
      Guide

      Hi,

      I also attempted to connect with the client system and it still says the VPN group is empty so it is not working.

      Thanks

      • DamianM's avatar
        DamianM
        NETGEAR Moderator

        Hello Crash_HI,

         

        I would like to discuss this case with the engineers and will let you know when I have further information for you.

         

        Have a nice day! 

         

        Best regards,
        DamianM
        NETGEAR team

    • Crash_HI's avatar
      Crash_HI
      Guide

      After rebooting the router, according to the insight diagnostics, it is still broken.

  • I have multiple customers affected by this. I submitted a support case about this too. Personally, the issue has existed since 10AM CST 5/21/2021 that I am aware of. I can not conclusivley speak on belahf of Netgear, but I believe they stated that they recently became aware of the issue, bellieve to have found the issue, but do not have an ETA  on when it wil be resolved.  

     

    Also: As Feedback for Netgear staff: status.netgear.com shows all clear for all netgear prpoducts right now. I would strongly encourage you guys to update these dashboards as soon as issues like this are found. Insight should not be flagged as fully operational when it is not and I am clearly not the only person taking up support staffs time right now.

     

    Personally, I came close, but no actual success, with these steps:
    The below steps made it so my test users could see their VPN groups again, and even connect to them, getting the correct scope & subnet once connected...but I still could not actually access any internal resources. While this is written like a guide, please do not follow it as such, as it seems to resolve nothing. I am simply writign this out in case anyone else can build on it: 

    • Login to insight and go to VPN groups at https://insight.netgear.com/#/routers/settings/VPNGroups
    • Delete the VPN router from the associated group that requires immedate workaround.  You may get an error in deleting it. If you do, refresh the page, and try again. I had to do this 2 or 3 times before the router was removed from the VPN group.
    • Click over to the users tab, wait for it to load, click back over to the  VPN groups tab. 
    • Re-add the router to the VPN group. You may have to do the above jumping between pages and readding 2 or 3 times for it to succeed.
    • Go back to users. Delete users who need the groups to show back up again. Refresh the webpage. If it fails, repeat this process until it completes. May take 2 or 3 times. 
    • Wait a minute, then re-add the user. Have them click the invitation email to accept the group. 

    From this point, they will be able to see the group and seemingly connect to it, albeit in my testing, no actual network services will work. 

     

    If you want an actual workaroud for your end users, setup openVPN if you know how to, or if permissible, get yourself into your network, get Anydesk or Teamviewer insalled on thier computers, and have them use that until this issue is resolved. They might not like it, but they sure will prefer it to driving back into the office over the weekend. 

    • Crash_HI's avatar
      Crash_HI
      Guide

      I tried OpenVPN, but could not get a stable connection with either of the systems I used to attempt to connect.

       

      For example, once connected, if I try to install a network printer, after several tries sometimes I can do it, but it is rarely possible to print. If test by pinging the network printer ip when OpenVPN is connected, I get about 75% no reply or timeout, and tracert often reports destination is unreachable.

       

      I personally use OpenVPN on my home Netgear router and NAS and have never had these problems, so I have to assume there is some issue with OpenVPN on the BR500.

       

      In any case, OpenVPN has not been a viable workaround for me.

      Thanks

    • SBF1111's avatar
      SBF1111
      Initiate

      We have a similar issue - raised a ticket two days ago and the issue is not fixed and there is no update from the netgear team.

      We can't delete the group or the device - keep on getting an error message - extremely displeased by such poor support.

      Note also that https://status.netgear.com/insight shows everything green - its not.