OpenVPN for gaming?

deeds67

Hey there!

I've used OpenVPN together with Your-Freedom to play games which use UDP ports in the past (Heroes of Newerth), but seeing as I live in South Africa and Your-Freedom only has servers in the UK, I can't really play shooter games because the latency is too high (ping will be 300+).
My university uses an http proxy, so I can only forward TCP ports, but some games use UDP ports.

So I've done quite a lot of reading up on http tunneling and read that you can't tunnel UDP ports like that, but I did read that you can do it through a VPN.
Now, my question is, can I use a PC at home (there is no proxy at home) as a "server" and connect from my pc at university, the "client"?

My idea is that, I connect to the server, the server connects to the game, the server receives the UDP packets and somehow converts it to TCP, the server sends the TCP packets back to the client. I know how both TCP and UDP works, so I know that there will be some lag. I basically want a program that will do exactly the same as your-freedom, but not connect to an overseas server and give me the option to create my own server.

Is this possible using ONLY OpenVPN? Or do you know of some other software that I could use to achieve this?

Thanks in advance
deeds67

Mimiko

Yes, you can do, but if normal latency is 300+ on regular connection, VPN will not help you.

deeds67

Awesome! No, the problem is that Your-Freedom servers are in the UK, and I live in South Africa. It's okay when I'm playing games like HoN or Dota 2 which connect to the UK anyways, but when I want to play games like Battlefield 3 locally, I have to connect to UK, back to SA, back to UK and then to my pc which is a lot of hops.

So if there is a way, like you say, I will be able to connect from my university PC (which is behind an http proxy) to my home pc (no proxy there) to play games?

deeds67

I have a 60mb connection, so speed isn't really the problem. It's just latency when I have to connect to the UK servers to play a local game. I should get around 20-50ms ping if I can setup a VPN at home.

deeds67

If anyone could just send me in the right direction, I would be very grateful! I've done a LOT of reading up on this and only reached dead ends every time! I'm pretty sure someone has already attempted this, I just can't find out how. I've tried http tunneling, but UDP doesn't work through that..

Mimiko

Setup a basic OpenVPN setup with server and client and use it.

deeds67

Mimiko wroteSetup a basic OpenVPN setup with server and client and use it.

Thanks for the reply! I've been trying to do this for quite a while. The client is behind an http proxy. The server is behind no proxy. Here are my config files:

SERVER:

proto tcp-server
port 80
dev tun
ifconfig 10.8.0.1 10.8.0.2
secret key.txt
comp-lzo
keepalive 10 60
ping-timer-rem
persist-tun
persist-key

CLIENT:

remote 41.xxx.xx.xx
port 80
proto tcp-client
dev tun
ifconfig 10.8.0.2 10.8.0.1
comp-lzo
secret key.txt
keepalive 10 60
ping-timer-rem
persist-tun
persist-key

Regardless if the server is running or not, I get this error log from the client:

Sat Oct 13 01:12:16 2012 OpenVPN 2.2.2 Win32-MSVC++ [SSL] [LZO2] [PKCS11] built on Dec 15 2011
Sat Oct 13 01:12:16 2012 NOTE: OpenVPN 2.1 requires '--script-security 2' or higher to call user-defined scripts or executables
Sat Oct 13 01:12:16 2012 LZO compression initialized
Sat Oct 13 01:12:16 2012 TAP-WIN32 device [Local Area Connection 2] opened: \\.\Global\{7A9AF7DC-9BDA-47BC-AE10-42DBBC90BCA8}.tap
Sat Oct 13 01:12:16 2012 Notified TAP-Win32 driver to set a DHCP IP/netmask of 10.8.0.2/255.255.255.252 on interface {7A9AF7DC-9BDA-47BC-AE10-42DBBC90BCA8} [DHCP-serv: 10.8.0.1, lease-time: 31536000]
Sat Oct 13 01:12:16 2012 Successful ARP Flush on interface [13] {7A9AF7DC-9BDA-47BC-AE10-42DBBC90BCA8}
Sat Oct 13 01:12:16 2012 Attempting to establish TCP connection with 143.xxx.xx.xxx:80
Sat Oct 13 01:12:16 2012 TCP connection established with 143.xxx.xx.xxx:80
Sat Oct 13 01:12:21 2012 recv_line: TCP port read timeout expired
Sat Oct 13 01:12:21 2012 SIGTERM[soft,init_instance] received, process exiting

I forwarded port 1194 UDP on the server even though I'm using tcp 80. I've tried everything, don't know what I'm doing wrong! Any tips/help would be much appreciated! 😃

deeds67

So, I tried running OpenVPN through proxifier now, instead of using the built in proxy. I got these results:

Sat Oct 13 01:26:20 2012 OpenVPN 2.2.2 Win32-MSVC++ [SSL] [LZO2] [PKCS11] built on Dec 15 2011
Sat Oct 13 01:26:20 2012 NOTE: OpenVPN 2.1 requires '--script-security 2' or higher to call user-defined scripts or executables
Sat Oct 13 01:26:20 2012 LZO compression initialized
Sat Oct 13 01:26:20 2012 TAP-WIN32 device [Local Area Connection 2] opened: \\.\Global\{7A9AF7DC-9BDA-47BC-AE10-42DBBC90BCA8}.tap
Sat Oct 13 01:26:20 2012 Notified TAP-Win32 driver to set a DHCP IP/netmask of 10.8.0.2/255.255.255.252 on interface {7A9AF7DC-9BDA-47BC-AE10-42DBBC90BCA8} [DHCP-serv: 10.8.0.1, lease-time: 31536000]
Sat Oct 13 01:26:20 2012 Successful ARP Flush on interface [13] {7A9AF7DC-9BDA-47BC-AE10-42DBBC90BCA8}
Sat Oct 13 01:26:20 2012 Attempting to establish TCP connection with 41.xxx.xx.xx:80
Sat Oct 13 01:26:34 2012 TCP: connect to 41.135.52.62:80 failed, will try again in 5 seconds: Connection refused (WSAECONNREFUSED)
Sat Oct 13 01:26:48 2012 TCP: connect to 41.135.52.62:80 failed, will try again in 5 seconds: Connection refused (WSAECONNREFUSED)

Hope this means I made some progress xD

deeds67

Did a lot of reading up and it looks like my proxy is blocking OpenVPN? I'm pretty sure it's a Squid proxy.

deeds67

Still struggling with the same errors 🙁 Anyone have any tips on what I can change in my config file? I think server side is fine, it's just client side that's the problem.

deeds67

Please guys, I'll pay anyone 20$ over paypal if they can help me get this set up with the right config file or over Teamviewer. I have Teamviewer on both the client and server. I just can't get it to work!

Mimiko

The line

Sat Oct 13 01:26:48 2012 TCP: connect to 41.135.52.62:80 failed, will try again in 5 seconds: Connection refused (WSAECONNREFUSED)

explains for itself. Your OpenVPN server does not accept incomming packets on this port.

deeds67

Mimiko wroteThe line
Sat Oct 13 01:26:48 2012 TCP: connect to 41.135.52.62:80 failed, will try again in 5 seconds: Connection refused (WSAECONNREFUSED)
explains for itself. Your OpenVPN server does not accept incomming packets on this port.

Thanks for the reply!

I have tried ports 21, 23, 80, 443 and a load of other random ports and none of them have worked.. I am at the verge of giving up 🙁

awe_reaper

i'm also facing the same problem, i'm a college student and here they block ports for gaming so i figured out something for DOTA 2, i use openvpn for this, if it doesn't work i can tell u how it worked for me! u can actually use 2 clients if ur firewall shows some "keepalive" stuff. i personally use ovenvpn and then i run f secure freedome and then i'm able to play DOTA 2. Hope it helped, reply me if u find any problems, Cheers!!! 😃