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VPN on Orbi without DDNS

mayhemxtc
Tutor

VPN on Orbi without DDNS

 I have an RBR20 system, according to its web page: a router & 2 sattelites.

 

I saw a previous post with the same title that says it "should be no problem" to set up the vpn without setting up the ddns stuff, which is exactly what I want do, as there is no built in option for my provider (dnsexit - and no, I dont want to have to change providers).

However, when I try to enable the vpn, & click apply, I cant get past the popup telling me to enable ddns.

Can anyone help/advise p!se ?

 

Thanks

Model: RBK53| Orbi Router + 2 Satellites Orbi WiFi System
Message 1 of 8
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: VPN on Orbi without DDNS

I was looking over some VPN searches the other day. From what I gather, DDNS is needed on Orbi for VPN to work. Others mentioned that this was kind of odd. 

 

You might contact NG support to see what there official stance is on this.

@Blanca_O 

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Netgear-Orbi-RBK50-DDNS-issue/m-p/1649026#M42942 


@mayhemxtc wrote:

 I have an RBR20 system, according to its web page: a router & 2 sattelites.

 

I saw a previous post with the same title that says it "should be no problem" to set up the vpn without setting up the ddns stuff, which is exactly what I want do, as there is no built in option for my provider (dnsexit - and no, I dont want to have to change providers).

However, when I try to enable the vpn, & click apply, I cant get past the popup telling me to enable ddns.

Can anyone help/advise p!se ?

 

Thanks


 

Message 2 of 8
randomousity
Luminary

Re: VPN on Orbi without DDNS

I think maybe this is because your Orbi assumes that, with your WAN IP address being assigned by DHCP by the ISP, your VPN can't work. The most straighforward way to address this would be to get a reserved/static WAN IP from your ISP, which probably costs extra, if they offer it. If they don't offer it, or you don't want to pay, there may not be a good way to make it work. But you can probably make it work anyway, just with lower reliability. If you can determine your WAN IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway, you could probably manually enter them into the Orbi as a static IP address, and the Orbi should allow you to use the VPN feature without enabling the DDNS feature.

 

The problem here is you run the risk of your WAN IP lease expiring and your ISP assigning your connection a new WAN IP address. Because you will have disabled DHCP, your manually-configured WAN IP won't match your ISP's IP configuration, and you won't be able to use the internet at all from home, and your VPN won't work while you're away, either. You'll have to stay on top of things and check regularly, and update the WAN IP settings as necessary. It'll be free, and will probably work most of the time, but it really depends on your ISP, how often it changes WAN IP leases, and your tolerance for outages due to mismatched configurations. And, I suppose, your ability to remember that, during an outage, one of your early troubleshooting steps will have to be to re-enable WAN DHCP, get a new lease, then transcribe that new info back into the static IP settings field.

Message 3 of 8
mayhemxtc
Tutor

Re: VPN on Orbi without DDNS

I raised a support ticket, as suggested. Cheers
Message 4 of 8
mayhemxtc
Tutor

Re: VPN on Orbi without DDNS

I have a dynamic dns provider which points my domain at whatever IP my ISP assigns me, and a cron job that checks it every 5 mins and updates the dns if need be.
The problem is that I dont want to have to use one of the dynamic dns providers that are preconfigured on the router.
I could of course run my own openvpn server, but it would be nice to use the builtin functionality without being forced to use netgears preferred suppliers
Message 5 of 8
randomousity
Luminary

Re: VPN on Orbi without DDNS

Yeah, I get that, but I don't think it's feasible for them to make the firmware work with arbitrary DDNS providers.

Message 6 of 8
mayhemxtc
Tutor

Re: VPN on Orbi without DDNS

I understand that and am not expecting them to. I just want tp be able to enable the vpn without entering ddns provider details at this point.

Whilest you probably wouldnt want to run a vpn without it, there are concievably times when you would. Such as in my case, or if you have a static IP from your ISP, to name two.

The reason I dont want to change is that I got my bought & paid for .co.uk domain name transfered to my current provider, whereas the provider options given dont provide the services I want/need or want a lot of money for it

 

I havent had a reply from Netgear support, so will proceed with setting up vm for this today.

 

Thanks for your help

Model: RBK53| Orbi Router + 2 Satellites Orbi WiFi System
Message 7 of 8
mrmstn
Guide

Re: VPN on Orbi without DDNS

TL;DR: Netgear won't help (maybe because they partnert up with no-ip). I think this restriction defentily should not exist. And yeah, I also got my own domain and more or less a static IP, but given by dhcp.
----
Haha - I also opend a support ticket on that one - I also posted some things on here: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Strange-requirement-for-VPN-activation/m-p/1694642

I also posted a replay from the support: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Strange-requirement-for-VPN-activation/m-p/1694654/highlight/t...

They just told me it's not possible, I need DynDNS if don't have a static IP, I should look into https://kb.netgear.com/23944/I-have-a-Nighthawk-router-what-is-Dynamic-DNS-and-why-should-I-set-up-a... why I need DynDNS.


Currently I'm trying to build my custom rom, based on the firmware from https://kb.netgear.com/2649/NETGEAR-Open-Source-Code-for-Programmers-GPL but it looks some packages get lost somewhere (I flashed the hole thing on my RBS20 Satelite as a test and it looked like the wifi driver went missing, so I'm currenty back on the Stock Rom.

So.. If anyone has e Idea or knows something more about openWRT then a newbie like me, just PM me - I'm currently using the docker container from here: https://hub.docker.com/r/cybertanyellow/qsdk-buildroot it comes with a gcc 4.8.4 compiler, instead of the expected 3.2. I also tried the 3.2 but that one didn't work ether...

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