I am experiencing various problems with the iOS app and my VPN service. I have contacted the VPN service (cryptostorm.is) who have been helpful, but they say there is no problem with their servers that they are aware of. So now I think there might be an issue with OpenVPN, which I'd like to report and - I hope - get some help with here.
I'll try to be as brief as I can while including all the info that I think is relevant!
- I'm on the iOS beta: currently version 12.1
- My ideal situation is that my VPN stays connected all the time
- I am usually either connected to a good wifi signal or a good 4G mobile signal, and often move between the two
- I recently got fed up with NordVPN not staying connected, deleted their app, and signed up to cryptostorm instead, hoping they would be better. This requires the OpenVPN app for iOS, which I installed
- I enabled the "reconnect on wakeup", "seamless tunnel", and "continuously retry" settings
- During the first day of using OpenVPN with cryptostorm's config files, I found I was frequently not connected to the VPN server and needed to manually intervene to reconnect several times during the day. This was particularly noticeable when leaving a wifi connection and moving to a 4G mobile connection
- I contacted cryptostorm for advice. They said their servers are reliable, and suggested changing some settings: turning off "DNS fallback", switching to "IPv4-only" and turning off "Layer 2 reachability", which I did
- I now found the connectivity much better when on Wi-Fi but still problematic when on 4G. I was able to connect OK (manually) to riseup.net's VPN, for example, via 4G but not to cryptostorm (not reliably anyway)
- Now I found that after leaving Wi-Fi and moving to 4G, I was receiving no data as OpenVPN was continuously trying to connect to the VPN but not succeeding (the little "busy" circle just going round and round endlessly)
- Still trusting that the issue was not with cryptostorm's server availability/reachability, I decided to try changing my "Connect via" setting to "Wi-Fi only" so that at least when on 4G I would be online, even if not via a VPN
- However, now I am in the situation where even with "Wi-Fi only" selected, my phone is still trying (and failing) to connect to the VPN via 4G. Combined with having "continuously retry" enabled, this means that I still need to manually stop OpenVPN trying to connect to the server in order to get any data through