VPN Connects but no Internet ON SOME NETWORKS

vicmorrowshead

Hello,

I heave searched for a solution to this issue that I am having but cannot find anything related. Everything that comes up is regarding being able to connect and not having Internet all of the time due to usually not having masquerading or forwarding set (a permanent problem). For me, it is only on certain router(s?) - e.g., the local coffee shop.

I have an OpenVPN server and it works great for me. I use it for my laptop and also for my Android phone. It forwards everything correctly, it is fast and responsive and all that good stuff.

When I go to this coffee shop (and certainly there will be others), I connect to their wifi without any issue and the service is actually quite fast and there are no complications. Once I connect to my VPN (which happens quickly and without any issue every time), everything just stops: no internet access. Even typing "route" (I am using Ubuntu 16.04), it sits there for a long time before giving its output. Which, when it does, it seems correct.

I do not believe this to be an MTU size issue. I set up another OpenVPN server on my VPN server with an MTU size of 1200 and got this configured to be working on both client and server. But, once I go into the coffee shop - same thing: no data. Yet the connection to the VPN server is stable and quick.

My server and client configuration are pretty much the OpenVPN defaults and is configured for UDP - nothing fancy.

When my laptop connects to the shop's wifi, here is the configuration that comes back:

mywifiadapter    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xxxxx 
          inet addr:192.168.0.121  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::c438:b2e3:222f:5963/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:13061 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:14368 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:7871784 (7.8 MB)  TX bytes:6208223 (6.2 MB)

I am not sure where to look at this point. As I write this, I am back on my own wifi router and I am doing it through my VPN connection without any issues.

Thanks
vmh

TinCanTech

Please see:
HOWTO: Request Help !

vicmorrowshead

My apologies. Google landed me on this page: https://forums.openvpn.net/viewforum.php?f=32 which doesn't seem to indicate the presence of the "community projects -> server administration -> configuration" forum unless I back out of 'OpenVPN Technologies' which is where I thought I needed to be. When the page came up. I saw Android, iOS, and Access Server were my only choices and assumed it was the latter since the first two were not right. I never knew there was a 'paid for' service for OpenVPN - my bad. (Although I have no idea why the community forum isn't part of 'OpenVPN Technologies' :-)).

Thanks for the link.