Vpn connection dropout on uk virgin media

[Nickel]

Hey! New member here! Hoping someone may have some insight… I have over 100 synology units (mix of dsm420/428/1620, in all different locations, all connecting to an openvpn. 80% are fine working 24/7 and accessible via the vpn. The remaining 20% go offline regularly, once a day or so, the common factor with all of them is they are on Virgin Media here in the uk, every single one that goes offline. The weird thing is that when you log in locally to check after they aren’t accessible externally anymore, in networks vpn shows as connected still! I have a script to reconnect regularly but for this problem it’s no good because it sees it as connected and doesn’t run. Anyone seen this? I’m so frustrated!! I’ve tried a lot already but welcome any suggestion to test!

-- post merged: 9. Jul 2021 --

To add, the vpn showing as connected might be a red herring as it probably shows as disconnected after a while, it’s definitely disconnected as I can tell from my vpn management console. No reconnect scripts (I have one set for every 5 mins) work, the only solution is to log in locally disconnect then reconnect

 

[Rusty]

Welcome to the forum!

sounds like Virgin is killing or filtering vpn traffic at some point, somehow. What protocol is that openvpn running with? Have you tried over tcp instead of udp or vice versa?

 

[Nickel]

I wasn’t aware I could choose to be honest, is that a setting on the synology? I just load in the profile. It’s so random, most clients it’s daily if not twice, some go a bit longer. Ip packet filtering on virgin firewalls we have turned off after one suggestion, and all their settings relating to vpns seem to be set right

 

[Rusty]

In the OVPN settings section of the VPN you can configure subnet, encryption etc, and you can also configure custom protocol and port. That's where you configure it and ofc, later on, change the vpn file to match your wan address before import (in case you want to redo it you will have to export it and import it to all the hosts)

 

[Nickel]

@Rusty you could well be onto something here! I just found this UDP issues on SuperHub3 - collective thread
Im setting them to TCP only to see how they behave

 

[Rusty]

@Rusty you could well be onto something here! I just found this UDP issues on SuperHub3 - collective thread
Im setting them to TCP only to see how they behave

Well from this it is clear that superhub3 firmware has been "tweaked" to throttle UDP traffic with slow speeds and high latency. This is most likely because of p2p traffic (torrents), but could be very well to discourage people from going for a solution that you are pushing for.

Going over TCP in your case will also depend on how it will work. The reason is that you will also have to use a custom port (my advice is something in the dynamic range - 1024 or higher) but it will depend if your ISP is blocking custom ports on their end or not forwarding traffic. In that case, you will be out of luck, but do try it anyways.