ANSWERED Does Air Servers drop your connection when not in use?

[Lee47 23]

Thanks, no rush at all I only use air on everything all the time and prefer the added security and privacy

[Lee47 23]

2nd day success, no 5 minute wait if its golden tommorow am happy.

 

What I will do is go through each and every setting to double check just in case I put something incorrect with the clear net issue soon, it feels like its not getting the opendns/dhcp settings correctly somewhere, but it is strange few websites work and others dont.

[Lee47 23]

3rd morning in a row and success, no sign of issue of dns/dhcp issues.... by monday morning will know 100% if fixed then I can add a switch and allow other devices to run under airvpn so looking very good

[pfSense_fan 181]

3rd morning in a row and success, no sign of issue of dns/dhcp issues.... by monday morning will know 100% if fixed then I can add a switch and allow other devices to run under airvpn so looking very good

 

Excellent! What is the status of the LAN interface? Still not functioning?

[Lee47 23]

I went through your entire guide again and everything is ok ticked for tick, there was the one minor thing I noticed under "Default allow LAN to any rule" firewall rule

you mentioned to "Destination port range = [ Any ]" but no such option is on there? I just carried on with the guide.

 

Otherwise tick for tick I have looked over it few times and its all the same. I tried clearnet network port again and now no net access at all. So it seems to have got worse, mind you before only a few sites opened but were opening...

 

I feel the clearnet is getting blocked or not getting dhcp/dns perhaps... I checked the network settings and it does say dhcp enabled on and ip/dns is still saying assigned to 192.168.1.1 (pfsense box).

 

Would it help if I posted logs or my firewall screens or anything else?

 

AirVPN network port is golden though, 4th day in a row and no issue at all which is pretty much 99% what I use

[pfSense_fan 181]

I went through your entire guide again and everything is ok ticked for tick, there was the one minor thing I noticed under "Default allow LAN to any rule" firewall rule

you mentioned to "Destination port range = [ Any ]" but no such option is on there? I just carried on with the guide.

 

Ah ha! We find a discrepancy! I looked at it and noticed a few incorrect entries in the Firewall rules section on both the LAN and AirVPN_LAN interface. I have edited and corrected them. You should delete your entries and re-enter them.

 

Otherwise tick for tick I have looked over it few times and its all the same. I tried clearnet network port again and now no net access at all. So it seems to have got worse, mind you before only a few sites opened but were opening...

 

I feel the clearnet is getting blocked or not getting dhcp/dns perhaps... I checked the network settings and it does say dhcp enabled on and ip/dns is still saying assigned to 192.168.1.1 (pfsense box).

 

I am somewhat at a loss here. I do not think correcting those firewall entries will help this part of it. Is the DNS Forwarder actually enabled under https://192.168.1.1/services_dnsmasq.php ?  It seems it is... your entries stating 192.168.1.1 are correct if it is enabled. It's odd that when you do a DNS leak test it finds no DNS at all. Are there any DNS entries entered under https://192.168.1.1/system.php ?  Are they set for WAN_DHCP as they should be? If that is not correct set and save those settings.

 

If that doesn't work I have another idea.

 

Would it help if I posted logs or my firewall screens or anything else?

 

Not at this time.

 

AirVPN network port is golden though, 4th day in a row and no issue at all which is pretty much 99% what I use

 

Good, as it should be.

 

I rarely use my LAN either... but it's there if we need it without out us having to reconfigure our entire setup. That's why I leave it. Eventually there will be times you will need it.

[Lee47 23]

Yeah I think it was just that one error or two nothing too serious mind and things one could just continue on from. I will however redo those 2 firewall settings again:)

 

I checked under https://192.168.1.1/services_dnsmasq.php? and DNS forwarding is ticked and I have selected Lan and Localhost and both are highlighted with strict interface binding option.

 

Under : https://192.168.1.1/system.php? I have used your opendns both servers both gateways are to my wan_dhcp-wan xx.xx.xx.xx (ip address)

 

I had a few teething issues but went through your revised guide and went through it again all over and all my issues are fixed apart from the clear net not working. I visit a website which seems to come up as blocked I think its pfsense blocking it since it shows a white screen with a grey background reporting application firewall error and on the page it displays : Your request has been blocked.

 

Could your settings have somehow blocked this one website ?

 

I would try it on clearnet otherwise, at least you were not kidding when you said its handy to have it

[pfSense_fan 181]

Yeah I think it was just that one error or two nothing too serious mind and things one could just continue on from. I will however redo those 2 firewall settings again:)

 

I checked under https://192.168.1.1/services_dnsmasq.php? and DNS forwarding is ticked and I have selected Lan and Localhost and both are highlighted with strict interface binding option.

 

Under : https://192.168.1.1/system.php? I have used your opendns both servers both gateways are to my wan_dhcp-wan xx.xx.xx.xx (ip address)

 

I ran into some other issues sadly with it, I think when I applied some of your other tweeks mentioned on the other post and when I went through your guide again double checking everything, the next day airvpn.org was blocked! Not sure what happen exactly... so I recalled a trick about entering the :

 

 

85.17.207.151 airvpn.org

212.117.180.25 airvpn.org

 

into my host file, once I done that I was able to get back onto air forums and website.... so not sure what happen there exactly. But it works regardless.

 

Also I noticed even though I am trying a Netherlands server  my browser activities seem to believe I am in Germany, perhaps Air Netherlands servers are using German dns... so when I go to google it goes to google.de by default. I will try another server and see how it goes though....

 

Strange occurrence also with speedtest it reports my real location (well close!) despite ipleak saying my IP is in Netherlands, ipleak also shows location in Netherlands on the google map.... so I was not sure about this either.

 

Still am happy to report the 5 minute wait issue is a thing of the past and after 2 months of trying you made that possible, so not enough thanks to express gratitude!

 

 

Oh well. At this point I don't know, that is exactly how i have been running mine.

 

That being said, I have been thinking long and hard during our adventure here, and all the while I have been writing my tutorial. I came up with a slightly different method that gets rid of the DNS Forwarder all together. It also uses AirVPN as the Default gateway. The only thing I don't cover is the initial installation, as there are many tutorials for that on the web. Other then that I tried to be as thorough as possible. I should be done with the tutorial this week. In fact, I almost finished last night but had domestic issues to tend to. Hang in there and when it's up I hope you'll give that a try.

 

Hopefully our trials here will help the community.

 

I do have an idea for your current issue though, the one I had earlier in the week. If you go to the windows "Network and Sharing Center" (Right click on your network adapter on the system tray)  you will see an icon under where it says "View your active Networks". Click the ICON (not the link). A new window pops up (Pro tip: you can also go back and name the connections here so that in your tray you know if you are connected to AirVPN or Clear-Net) and there is a link for "Merge or delete network locations". My guess is you will have multiple networks listed there. DELETE THEM ALL. This will ensure any bad setting that were buried deep on your "LAN" network are deleted and start fresh.You will receive your settings from dhcp. It seems windows is blocking you, hopefully this solves it.

 

If not, just hold on a few more days for my tutorial.

 

 

EDIT: Just another thought... are you rebooting after changing these settings? I guess I forget to mention because I assume it's standard knowledge... but when you change settings that affect a route you must reboot. You should reboot when you make changes just in case, even if not "required". I remembered that after I make some of these changes I too get blocked... until I reboot. Just a thought.

[Lee47 23]

I was editing while you typed that so ignore my previous post

 

It was just my error on my part I went through your revised guide with the updated rules and applied them, also I went through some of the firewall rules and noticed protocol : udp was set when it was meant to be any, could have sworn I set them to any or per your guide might have been the recent changes even.

 

Everything is working, clearnet is now working 100% also, tried amazon and ebay and the ones that did not work and they are fine and ipleak shows all 4 opendns servers and my real isp ip.

 

AirVPN is working perfectly, I deleted that air address in my windows host files and it works fine again without it. Speedtest shows am connected to my air server in europe again, I still see some instances of my browser fingerprint (google.de or google.us etc) but this is normal since its in the area of the air server I am connected too, connecting to other servers gets better results or the one in my real area fixes it 100% but prefer other country air servers.

 

That website I mentioned that was not working, works fine under clearnet so I think they blocked me perhaps they felt I was a spammer under that shared IP.

 

Yes have deleted old networks and renamed them to make better sense. Your right sometimes I forget to reboot to take full effect of the new pfsense changes, must remember this in future.

 

So at this point its pretty much working 100% with clear net and airvpn.  Think ill save it few times!

 

Regarding the other guide, that sounds pretty good ill be the first guinea pig

[pfSense_fan 181]

...........

 

So at this point its pretty much working 100% with clear net and airvpn.  Think ill save it few times!

 

Regarding the other guide, that sounds pretty good ill be the first guinea pig

 

That is great news! I'm glad it is working now. Perhaps go back to the post with my tutorial and mark it as solved then.

 

I'd also hope the staff can move this thread to the troubleshooting forum.

 

I look forward to your trying the tutorial. You convinced me to come up with a more basic setup with AirVPN default gateway for the masses.

 

I have one question though, as i have not reinstalled pfSense in quite some time, can you look at a setting and report to me what the default setting was?  If you go to System > Advanced > Firewall and NAT, at the bottom there is a setting for "NAT Reflection mode for port forwards ". What do you have set?

[Lee47 23]

Hi yes I have marked it as solved, I know it is working fine since when I switch on the PC you see how it gets the dhcp/dns correctly straight away.... this never happen before + the 6-7 days of testing just to be sure!

 

I have checked the reflection setting and its set to disable.

 

I think given how complex pfsense can be it is so easy to even have one setting incorrect which could prevent it from working, perhaps a very simple guide just to get it up and running does sound a great idea!

 

I was going to ask can I use other DNS entries under general setup ? I see everything is air dns anyhow but would prefer to use logless dns servers

[pfSense_fan 181]

....

 

I have checked the reflection setting and its set to disable.

 

....

 

I was going to ask can I use other DNS entries under general setup ? I see everything is air dns anyhow but would prefer to use logless dns servers

 

Thank you for checking that setting. I am researching it and couldn't remember the default.

 

You can use any DNS you want that is not the airvpn ones.