Quoth The Manual wrote--remote-random
- When multiple --remote address/ports are specified, or if connection profiles are being used, initially randomize the order of the list as a kind of basic load-balancing measure.
Quoth The Manual wrote--remote host [port] [proto]
- Remote host name or IP address. On the client, multiple --remote options may be specified for redundancy, each referring to a different OpenVPN server. Specifying multiple --remote options for this purpose is a special case of the more general connection-profile feature. See the <connection> documentation below.
The OpenVPN client will try to connect to a server at host:port in the order specified by the list of --remote options.
proto indicates the protocol to use when connecting with the remote, and may be "tcp" or "udp".
For forcing IPv4 or IPv6 connection suffix tcp or udp with 4/6 like udp4/udp6/tcp4/tcp6.
The client will move on to the next host in the list, in the event of connection failure. Note that at any given time, the OpenVPN client will at most be connected to one server.
Note that since UDP is connectionless, connection failure is defined by the --ping and --ping-restart options.
Note the following corner case: If you use multiple --remote options, AND you are dropping root privileges on the client with --user and/or --group, AND the client is running a non-Windows OS, if the client needs to switch to a different server, and that server pushes back different TUN/TAP or route settings, the client may lack the necessary privileges to close and reopen the TUN/TAP interface. This could cause the client to exit with a fatal error.
If --remote is unspecified, OpenVPN will listen for packets from any IP address, but will not act on those packets unless they pass all authentication tests. This requirement for authentication is binding on all potential peers, even those from known and supposedly trusted IP addresses (it is very easy to forge a source IP address on a UDP packet).
When used in TCP mode, --remote will act as a filter, rejecting connections from any host which does not match host.
If host is a DNS name which resolves to multiple IP addresses, OpenVPN will try them in the order that the system getaddrinfo() presents them, so priorization and DNS randomization is done by the system library. Unless an IP version is forced by the protocol specification (4/6 suffix), OpenVPN will try both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, in the order getaddrinfo() returns them.
davekyonet wrote
does the remote-random configuration item apply when using a domain with multiple A records?
No.
