Toasty Tries It Out..and needs a lil' help..

[ToastyTheEel 1]

LZ1 (and anyone else),

 

I had an hour or two so I figured I'd start my three day trial this afternoon and see what happened.  The Eddie client installed easily, painlessly, and goofproof on my Win7 machine, and ipleak.net shows that it's functioning famously, with minimal reductions in speed from my regular service.  Bravo!

 

Now... as you had warned.. the router installation is a WHOLE 'nuther ball-o-ticked-off-cats.  I followed the guide here..

 

https://airvpn.org/asuswrt/

 

No problem creating and downloading the config file from the config generator.  Installed it per step 2 in that aforementioned guide, smooth as silk.  Then... my internet was broke.  I couldn't even reach my router.  I did this via wifi (which may have been a bad idea).  I solved it by disabling my wireless adapter, connecting to the router via a lan cable.  Even then, I couldn't reach the internet at all, and even accessing the router's pages was painfully (I mean, like minutes between page loads) slow, and sometimes not possible.  Pings around my network to various devices were still good, though.  I was eventually able to restore a backup config file I had saved for my router settings two days ago (Smart eh?  DO NOT FORGET BACKUPS, friends), and all is well again. 

 

I ran the win7 "network troubleshooter" prior to restoring my previous good router settings and it returned a DNS error of some kind.  Should I have performed step three in the above guide, setting the DNS servers to the AirVPN and OpenNIC servers FIRST, and then doing step 2?

 

I'm a little afraid of messing with the router now.  Can anyone tell me where I went wrong?  I'd love to have the KodiPi's behind a VPN if at all possible, via the router, but I sure don't want to mess things up irrevocably; getting all 13 devices in  my house linked securely was a bit of a feat for me when I updated the router a few months ago.  It's all working great now, and AirVPN works great on my laptop via Eddie.  Sooo... CAN I get it working just as well on the router?

 

Thanks in advance for any "Hey, stupid, you need to do this and this, first... !!!!" comments!

 

Best..

[go558a83nk 364]

LZ1 (and anyone else),

 

I had an hour or two so I figured I'd start my three day trial this afternoon and see what happened.  The Eddie client installed easily, painlessly, and goofproof on my Win7 machine, and ipleak.net shows that it's functioning famously, with minimal reductions in speed from my regular service.  Bravo!

 

Now... as you had warned.. the router installation is a WHOLE 'nuther ball-o-ticked-off-cats.  I followed the guide here..

 

https://airvpn.org/asuswrt/

 

No problem creating and downloading the config file from the config generator.  Installed it per step 2 in that aforementioned guide, smooth as silk.  Then... my internet was broke.  I couldn't even reach my router.  I did this via wifi (which may have been a bad idea).  I solved it by disabling my wireless adapter, connecting to the router via a lan cable.  Even then, I couldn't reach the internet at all, and even accessing the router's pages was painfully (I mean, like minutes between page loads) slow, and sometimes not possible.  Pings around my network to various devices were still good, though.  I was eventually able to restore a backup config file I had saved for my router settings two days ago (Smart eh?  DO NOT FORGET BACKUPS, friends), and all is well again. 

 

I ran the win7 "network troubleshooter" prior to restoring my previous good router settings and it returned a DNS error of some kind.  Should I have performed step three in the above guide, setting the DNS servers to the AirVPN and OpenNIC servers FIRST, and then doing step 2?

 

I'm a little afraid of messing with the router now.  Can anyone tell me where I went wrong?  I'd love to have the KodiPi's behind a VPN if at all possible, via the router, but I sure don't want to mess things up irrevocably; getting all 13 devices in  my house linked securely was a bit of a feat for me when I updated the router a few months ago.  It's all working great now, and AirVPN works great on my laptop via Eddie.  Sooo... CAN I get it working just as well on the router?

 

Thanks in advance for any "Hey, stupid, you need to do this and this, first... !!!!" comments!

 

Best..

 

the machine that was accessing the router for the VPN setup was connected to VPN at the time you turned on VPN on the router?

[ToastyTheEel 1]

the machine that was accessing the router for the VPN setup was connected to VPN at the time you turned on VPN on the router?

 

I'm sorry.. I should have made that clearer.  No; the first thing I tried to do was install AirVPN on the router. When that failed, I restored the router to its previous state, and THEN installed Eddie on my win7 laptop.  It works great on the laptop, and reverts back to my regular non-VPN connection without any trouble at all when I disconnect and shut down Eddie properly.  I'd love to get it working just as well on the router, but I'm pretty gunshy right now.  I almost couldn't connect to my router enough to revert back to my previous backup.  Obviously, I wouldn't use it on the laptop AND the router simultaneously if the laptop was connecting via the router. 

 

Again, my apologies for the confusion.  Can anyone help with either a link or comments as to what I did wrong w/ my router?  I followed the guide exactly as written.. perhaps the steps are reversed and the DNS servers need to be set PRIOR to loading the config file?

 

Best to all..

[StealthySausage 1]

Probably all you need to do is set "Accept DNS Configuration" on your router's VPN settings to something other than the default and then apply it. "Relaxed" works for me. As far as I know, you don't need to change the Windows network adapter DNS settings, as it gets it from your router. So set the Windows adapter's DNS to whatever allowed your internet to function before, or set it to the local address of the router.

 

It's best to verify that there are no DNS leaks occuring when you change that setting on your router, of course, but when I set it to "Relaxed" and then look in the router's system log, I can see that it switches to AirVPN's DNS whilst the VPN is enabled, then back to my ISP's DNS when I disable the VPN.

[go558a83nk 364]

My suggestion for the router is to install merlin's firmware, which will look much like stock with some improvements.  https://www.snbforums.com/forums/asuswrt-merlin.42/  The openvpn interface is much better.

[ToastyTheEel 1]

Thank you both for your replies.  After having spent some more time on the issue this morning, I'm happy to report that I've got things up and running.  The trick was, as I suspected, to change the DNS settings PRIOR to activating the AirVPN client on the router.   I used the config generator to make zip file containing a config for servers in the Americas and one for servers in Europe.  The RT-AC56U's stock updated firmware allows you to upload them both, then choose which one to activate.  After uploading them but PRIOR to activation, I changed the router's DNS settings to the AirVPN DNS and to one chosen from the recommended OpenNIC site.  After doing that, I verified that my internet was still working and it was.  As an aside, Eddie was NOT open nor operating on my laptop at the time and all this was done w/out any vpn at all on my regular ISP connection; again, my apologies for the confusion in my earlier post.  All was good, so I took a deep breath and activated the America config VPN... and it worked!  Strangely, it still connected me to a server in Europe, but it did work.  ipleak.net verified everything.. home isp invisible, no dns leaks, no WebRTC issues... beautiful. 

 

Downside?  My speed has suffered a good bit.. much more than it did when I was running just the Win7 machine via Eddie.  I typically get just over 30mbps down and 7mbps up; w/ Eddie on a good server I got 22-24 down and 6 up, which is more than acceptable.  With the router installation, I'm getting 7-9 down and 1.5-2 up.  Not sure I can live with that, but I'll keep trying.

 

I read the suggestion to change to Merlin firmware on the router.  I'm not DRASTICALLY opposed to doing so, but I'm assuming that would mean starting from scratch as far as configuring the router and all the devices going through it.  If that's the case, I'd like to avoid that unless there's a big benefit.  I don't torrent, barely know what Tor is, have never ventured into Darkweb territory, and have no need to access my home network while traveling, so I'm assuming that I don't really need any increased flexibility.  If I'm wrong, PLEASE feel free to tell me. 

 

I may be back with a couple questions.  First, I'm going to try out a few ideas to see if I can get my speed back up a bit on my own. 

 

Thanks again, so much, for the ideas and the support.

[ToastyTheEel 1]

An update...

 

On the router, I've tried a few different configs, including ones specifying the country with the servers that are fastest when used via Eddie and the Win7 laptop, and tried both UDP and TCP settings.  The best I was ever able to do speedwise using the VPN on the router and NOT Eddie was 12mpbs down/2mbps up.  Good enough for streaming on the Kodi boxes, but not great.  Besides the speed issue, the other downsides are that, unless I specify a server w/in the US, Amazon streaming, my local cable TV streaming app, and the individual network apps on the Rokus (NBC, etc) are all disabled as I appear to be out of the US.  To be expected, I guess. 

 

Good news..

 

1.  AirVPN DOES work on the Asus RT-AC56U router, using the recent updated stock firmware.

2.  It's very easy, using that firmware, to load several different OpenVPN config files, switch between them, or return to a VPN-free regular usage of the router.

3.  Speed on the Win7 laptop via Eddie is EXCELLENT.  Right now, the server I'm using is only barely slower than my vpn-free regular IP connection.. still over 30mbps down/7mbps up. 

4.  Switching between using Eddie on the laptop OR an AirVPN config file on the router is not difficult.

5.  AirVPN on the router is fast enough to use Kodi for streaming on a Pi.

 

The not-so-good news/questions...

 

1.  If you're in the US, you have to specify a US server to use some services.  Is there a way around that that won't further reduce speed?

2.  AirVPN on the router is much, MUCH slower.  Is there something that can be done to improve that?  I've read a couple other threads about inferior performance on router installations (due to inadequate processor power for encryption on most consumer routers?) but no one seems to agree on the causes, and some claim to get speeds up to 100mbps with a router installation.  What is the real truth?!?

3.  With AirVPN on the router, our Android tablet gets bounced off our network connection constantly, or won't connect at all.  I've tried both the 2.4ghz and 5ghz connections.. same thing.  It's the only device with that issue.  Ideas? edit -- I'm on a different server now, and the tablet's connection is now stable.  Weird.

 

The router, as oft stated, has a dual core 1ghz processor and 256MB of DDR3 ram.  Is either one of those a reason for the poor performance when using AirVPN on it?  I checked the router's stats while streaming and during an up/down speed test, and it never used more than 1/3 of the available memory, and the two cores usually stayed arund 20%, with brief peaks up to just over 50% (and never simultaneously).

 

All in all, this will work out nicely and I'll be subscribing shortly.  Any help solving the few issues would be mucho appreciated.

 

Best to all....

[go558a83nk 364]

re the speed problems.  does the stock firmware allow you to create a few openvpn clients?  if so, try client 2.  stock firmware puts client 1 openvpn process on core 1 - the same core that runs kernel processes.  thus it can't crank up much.

 

openvpn client 2 should use core 2.

 

however, the max speed you'll probably get is about 40mbit/s at those clock speeds.  those CPUs just aren't able to crank out the encryption fast enough.

[ToastyTheEel 1]

Thanks for writing back.  The stock firmware allows uploads of any number of VPN client configurations, but I haven't noticed any difference in the way they split duties between the two processor cores.  I'm a little confused by your statement re/ a max speed of 40mbps, as if that's a negative.  My broadband service is touted (and actually achieves it's advertising!) as being 30Mbps down/5Mbps up, and that's more than fast enough for anything I need to do.  When I run the router w/ AirVPN active, the speed drops to 6mbps - 12 mbps, dependent upon server.  Are we using different terms?  40mbps would be a VERY fast consumer connection, unless I'm missing something.

 

I just bought a year's subscription; AirVPN works fast, easily, and flawlessly on the win7 laptop and on the android tablet, and well enough to allow streaming on the KodiPis when active on the router, so it's all good. 

 

If there ARE any other tips to get better performance from the router, I'm all eyes. 

 

Thanks again for the help.

[LZ1 673]

Hello!

 

He means there's a certain limit to how fast you can go, given the current CPU you have, as regular consumer routers, even the ones meant for VPNs, are quite weak. Imagine a highway - one lane is slower than having two lanes for traffic. So even if you have a very fast car (a fast connection you bought), it still won't make things go faster if there's congestion due to only having one lane, due to being restricted by what the CPU can handle. You could also eventually upgrade to a Turris Omnia for example; it's beastly and can handle a 100MB OpenVPN or so I hear.

 

Welcome to AirVPN, I hope you'll like it