ANSWERED OpenWrt: default gateway vs. policy based routing

Quokka

Hi Forum,

A couple of days ago I switched from my previous VPN supplier, Perfect Privacy, to AirVPN. I am not making use of Eddie, but am relying on a dedicated VPN router instead (a four port Protectli VP2420 with a Celeron J6412 processor). Connected to the switch downstream of this router are two desktops and a laptop. Since I was already using said VPN router when I was still making use of Perfect Privacy, reconfiguring it for AirVPN was a breeze: I uploaded the OpenVPN configuration files for a number of countries (Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden), and I was good to go 👍.

However, I do still have an issue now I am with AirVPN that I have not yet sorted out. This has to do with the fact that I’d like my two desktops to connect to a server in the Netherlands, whereas my laptop should connect to a server in Sweden. Previously, I managed to do this under OpenWrt by making the connection with the server in the Netherlands my default gateway, such, by adding the following two lines to the OpenVPN configuration file for the Dutch server:

   1.   redirect-gateway def1
   2.   redirect-gateway ipv6

At the same time, traffic from my laptop was routed to a server in Sweden - this, by making use of the ‘policy based routing’ package of OpenWrt, and by adding the following two lines to the OpenVPN configuration files for the Swedish server:

   3.   pull-filter ignore "redirect-gateway"
   4.   pull-filter ignore "redirect-gateway ipv6”

Having switched to AirVPN, I have been trying to reach the same result by adding lines 1 and 2 to the configuration file for the Netherlands ('remote nl3.vpn.airdns.org 443’), and lines 3 and 4 to the file for Sweden (‘remote se3.vpn.airdns.org 443’). Although it would have been nice if the solution were as simple as this 😎, unfortunately it doesn’t work. The server in the Netherlands doesn’t become my default gateway, and my laptop doesn’t connect to a server in Sweden as my routing policy tells it to.

My question is hence what I should change in the OpenVPN configuration file to make the connection to a server in the Netherlands my default gateway, and also, what needs to be changed in the configuration file for Sweden to make OpenWrt understand that a connection to a server in the latter country should be seen as ‘secondary gateway’, through which traffic is routed only when it is generated by the laptop for which my routing policy is in place. Any suggestions you may have will be warmly welcomed 🙏!

Edited ... by Quokka

Staff

Hello!

We post the reply to your ticket by the support team for the reader's comfort.

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Hello and thank you for your choice!

We do not think that the problem can be approached and resolved through OpenVPN configuration files. We would consider policy based routing on the router. In this way you can configure each specific device behind the router to have its traffic routed through the proper tun interface or even through the WAN (outside the VPN, therefore). Please check the documentation.

An overview of the Policy Based Routing (PBR) utility:
https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/routing/pbr

A specific approach to achieve the setup:

https://search.brave.com/search?q=openwrt+policy+routing+for+multiple+OpenVPN+client+connections&summary=1&conversation=f943dbcf532434cd689c65

Kind regards

AirVPN Support Team

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Kind regards