Internet connection no longer protected by VPN

[jbkolb 0]

I have a pfSense router configured to connect to AirVPN and protect my whole home. I have not made any changes to my configuration in weeks. I was sitting here moments ago on a video call for work when my connection dropped. Devices in my house could no longer reach the internet but I could ping addresses on the internet from the router. I tried a few things like restarting my OpenVPN client service and restarting the gateway service but nothing worked as far as getting my connection to the internet back up. Interestingly, the OpenVPN client did show that it had a connection and it was to a different server than the primary one I usually connect to. I usually connect to Metallah but now I was connected to Hercules, although I could not access the internet. Finally I rebooted my router and when it came back up I was online again. However, I was no longer going through the VPN. I have since found out that Metallah is down right now. I have my OpenVPN client configured so that it will automatically round robin through a list of alternate servers if the primary one (Metallah for me) goes down. Hercules is the next one on my list so that's what it is connecting to. But my traffic is no longer going through the VPN for some reason. I have tried several others from my list of alternates and I get the same with them. The client shows it's connected but nothing is going through the VPN. What's also very strange is that if I change the address of the server I'm connecting to in the OpenVPN client it will show that it is connected to the new server but I will no longer be able to access the internet anymore until I reboot the router. After it comes back up I will once again be online but no VPN protection. By the way, just to be clear, when I say I'm not going through the VPN anymore I mean that my ISP issued IP address is exposed when I go to online IP checkers and leak testers or even when I come here and look at "Your IP" in the banner at the top of the page. Anyway, this was not always the case. I used to be able to manually change the address of the VPN server in my OpenVPN client whenever I wanted. It would also switch over to the next server in my list if there was ever a problem with the one it was already connected to. Aside from a momentary blip while the new connection was established, it worked great. As I mentioned, I haven't changed anything with my configuration in weeks. It seems like Metallah going down is what set this off and aside from that there is nothing I know of that is different from a little while ago before my trouble started. Does anybody have any ideas what could be going on here?