I've been using the for the past year and it has worked most of the time.
However...
for the past week and a half, it has become very disappointing. Every night and often during the day the Network Speed graphs on the Insight Instant VPN application drop to 0 MB on both Recieved and Sent. When that happens, I loose connection to the devices on the network. The application shows it as connected (most of the time), the "Diagnosis Tool" shows Success. Sometimes the "Test VPN Server" button Insight App on the ipad responds with "Success", sometimes not.
I can use Team Viewer to get to the remote computer, so I know it's not a network problem. I can access several other devices from their internet-facing remote administration pages, so I know it's not an internet problem.
For the past week, I've been rebooting the router via the very, very limited Insight App on my ipad. That restores VPN connectivity most of the time. But rebooting disables Port Forwarding, Dynamic DNS, and OpenVPN which is becoming extremely tedious to restore manually everytime.
Before I dive into the 3 hour odyssy that is "Tech Support", I was hoping that someone might have some further troubleshooting suggestions.
Or to let me know if anyone has had similar issues.
After following some suggestions from a level 3 tech, it has been determined that the unit needs to be replaced. Our discussions didn't delve too deeply into the VPN problem specifically because we were focusing on the larger issue of the router losing it's non-Insight managed settings after a reboot (port-forward, DHCP Reservation, OpenVPN, DynDNS). That is the reason for the replacement.
If I find that the VPN reliablity changes after the new unit is installed I'll report back. In the meantime, good luck.
It's a pity that the Insight app can't make any changes to those deeper settings.
Just to add firmware 5.6.0.2 was released today and can be found on the support page. This does address VPN issues customers were running into with losing VPN routes from VPN client to router. Once you get your replacement unit, I would recommend upgrading to that firmware and you should see your VPN connection be more reliable.
On Wednsday, we installed the replacement, noted that is was on 5.6.0.2.
The insight desktop app connected immediatly and the Recieved graph was showing activity, but the Sent graph was sitting at 0. And we were unable to ping any of the devices on the LAN from a remote computer.
In the Netgear UI on the local computer, the Inight VPN tab showed the BR500 and the remote computer as Online.
The Insight VPN desktop app's Diagnosis Tool only gives you information about the health of the connection between the remote comptuer and Netgear's VPN server. There does not appear to be any way to diagnose or troubleshoot the connection between the Netgear server and the BR500.
please someone correct me if I'm mistaken.
anyway, a couple of hours later the Sent graph came to life and I was able to ping devices behind the BR500 from the remote computer.
This was great. And this state of great-ness lasted until this morning (Friday) at 7am when I looked at the remote computer, the Sent graph was back to a flatline. I had lost connection to the devices behind the BR500 at 3am.
I hit the reconnect button on the desktop app and now it won't re-connect.
not quite sure what next steps to take, other than wait for a couple of hours and try again.
at least I can remotely access the computer that's behind the BR500 using Spalshtop.
Quick question for anyone currently using Insight VPN: When looking at the VPN Group Map from within the BR500 Webpage UI, is the name of your VPN Group displayed with "(Other)" attached to it? In the Insight App and Cloud Portal the VPN Group name does not have "(Other)" attached to it. Just curious...
Anyway, back to troubleshooting steps taken this morning:
I tried to access the Insight VPN via the desktop app. No success.
OpenVPN works from the iPad and from a Parallels Win10.
I deleted the the BR500 from the VPN Group
I deleted myself as a user from the VPN Group
I removed the BR500 from the Insight Location via the app.
I created a new Insight Location via the app
I factory defaulted the BR500 via local browser UI
I added the newly reset BR500 to the new Insight Location via the app
I added the BR500 to the VPN Group
I invited myself to the VPN Group
I re-installed the Insight Desktop app on my computer and ran it.
no luck, same state as before. Fail.
Next step will be to deal with customer service. a 2-3 hour long odyssey that I am not looking forward to.
Does anybody have any hints about how to get past level 1 support?
Or maybe i will abandon the whole Insight idea and the dream of easy deployment, move to OpenVPN and spend my days helping co-workers getting that to work on their individual machines.
Did you verify the insight application has a rule set up in the windows firewall? In more than one of our desktops, this was not done and once we added it, everything was fine.
That was never a necessity for us in 5.6.0.1. And the diagnosis tool in the Desktop app calims Success with the firewall.
That being said, I'll investigate that as a possiblility.
My next step will be to downgrade back to 5.6.0.1 and see if that restores functionality. On the previous FW, Insight VPN worked, it was just intermittant and would require router reboot to work again. But at least it worked a bit over half the time.
I'm still stuck on the fact that the BR500 thinks it's connected to the VPN server and the Insight App does not.
I'm also stuck on the fact that the BR500's VPN page claims that the Network Name in the VPN Group list is "networkname(Other)" and not just simply "networkname"
My issue is Client to Site setup. I do not have a way to test site to site.
My original post came out of frustration with the long term intermittent problems with the VPN (in addition to a specific issue with a specific BR500).
But the new BR500 was put into service last Wednesday with FW5.6.0.2. VPN was solid for about 36 hours. Ever since 3am Friday, I have had no connectivity.
the BR500 GUI VPN page shows that it is Online with the VPN Group. However, the Insight Cloud Portal (and iOS app) Test VPN Server function fails with the message "Device is not responding as it is not connected to VPN server".
I spent about 4 hours last night with two different support people via chat with no success. I believe that the issue has been bounced up to engineering.
Saw the logs thank you. Working with engineering we believe we found the root cause and are debugging the issue. Any logs that are collected from BR500's are helpful.
We have deployed a fix last week on VPN random disconnection issue, from the # of active connections before and after the fix, we are confident that the fix has worked, the system should be much more solid now.
There is one open issue we are working on, which is two routers or the VPN client computer and the remote router might be connecting to two different proxy servers, therefore you'll see the VPN established from Insight, but the real traffic is not going through. We know the workaround is to reboot the router(s) and will connect back successfully.
If this workaround (reboot the router) does not work for you, please contact Insight engienering at insight-feedback@netgear.com, and we'll work with you on your issue.
I rebooted the router and updated to the latest client version on Saturday.
There was no improvement. I was either able to connect but couldn't reach devices behind the router, or it simply would not connect.
And to further complicate matters, my mac book pro had to go back to apple to fix a battery recall issue. They gave me a loaner that is running 10.14. The app that gets downloaded from the email invite link crashes on startup. And the installer downloaded from the BR500 support page doesn't run. Or more accurately, the installer runs, but nothing happens.
Ever since the last firmware update and client app update I have been able to maintain consistent connection to the network devices behind the BR500 thru the Insight VPN Client.
...Except with this new wrinkle...
When I'm on my network at home it does not work correctly. When I'm not at home and on other networks the system works swimmingly. But since the last updates something very odd occurs when on my home network:
When connecting via the client app it spins around for a while then the app shows the broken link icon and the re-connect button shows up.
The odd thing is that I am able to ping and screen share with the computer behind the BR500. I am connected to the BR500 via VPN, but the client app does not display this fact.
I'm on a mid-2015 MacBookPro running 10.11.6. I have a Parallels-based Windows 10 VM on this laptop and the client app on the windows side works as you would expect it to: It connects, shows connection, and I can reach network devices behind the BR500. This is also odd.
The network is an ORBI router connected to an ATT Pace 5268AC residential gateway. The Orbi is set in the DMZ+ on the Pace. The Pace is running 11.4.1.532484 firmware.
The support person I've been communicating with thinks it is an issue with my network and my computer. They have observed this issue directly using Team viewer. Hopefully they can offer some troubleshooting advice, but I'm at a loss to explain what kind of network filter could cause the Mac app to connect without showing connection, but a Windows app on the same machine to work normally. But I will continue to trouble shoot this issue when I get back home on Monday.
