OpenVPN Client works for a while, then hangs

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
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I added a license to connect my Balance to a VPN service as a client in order to get a static IP using ovpn.com service

Everything went very smoothly. It added the new WAN, connects, traffic flows as expected and the static IP is assigned and works for what I need. Color me happy. :wink:

Then after about a day of connection it will disconnect - continually try to connect again, and fail with no error message (that I can find), go into disconnected mode, rinse, repeat. Rebooting the balance from the GUI will then hang, so I have to power cycle, after which it comes up fine and connects again and is good for another day or so.

I’d like to be able to remove the step known as “power cycle”. :wink:

Anyone seen this kind of issue? This is a BPL-580 running 8.2.1 build 5134

2

@grahamk,
I experience this sometimes with my VPN provider. Sometimes they change server info and it messes things up. Try re-downloading the config file from the VPN provider to see if that might help the issue.

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Hi Graham. So, you got a “580,” huh? Nice! :<)

In addition what @Cable17 's good suggestion: If this is happening you may wish to set your router to reboot on schedule. Suppose, for example, you have it do so every day at 04:00 local time, for example. Might be worth a try. We’ve seen some providers that simply do not like persistent connections.

I’d also wonder if there may be another option for you such as SFC or directing your traffic to FusionHub. (Just had to ask …)

  • Rick
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Hey Rick - i thought i had mentioned to you that i bought a used 580 off of ebay, but if i didn’t I apologize for my lack of communication. Someone listed one so cheap that they clearly had no idea what they had, so i hopped on it. :slight_smile:

great suggestion - I figured out how to schedule a reboot - I might give that a try.

I realized that i had the openvpn connection only using one of my WANs, so i added a second one and so far so good … knocking on wood…

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Well there are some “finds” there if one is careful. :<)

Let us know how it goes with the “reboot scenario!”

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Well, the router won’t do a software reboot - it hangs at “System Rebooting…” and requires a power cycle. Could be why it was sold so cheap on ebay. :wink:

It’s tempting to put a smart switch on it and just power cycle it, but that’s not really a great thing to do with electronics like this. It might be time to start looking into the API.

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Hi Graham. You cannot schedule a reboot via the support.cgi menu?

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I can schedule the reboot, but it hangs when rebooting and needs to be power cycled to bring it back to life.

This happened again to me this weekend, I was out of town and the router quit responding to inbound OpenVPN. I was able to remotely reboot my starlink router, which disconnected the OpenVPN WAN and reconnected it again, ( i got e-mail notifications) but I still could not connect. When i got home i did a manual disconnect/connect of the OpenVPN WAN via the gui and it came back up working. Seems like a software issue to me. I’m going to need to figure out a way to power cycle my peplink remotely, which I think I can do fairly easily via homeseer.

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it would be great to have a option for a secondary vpn connection. This could work great. you can modify your ovpn file for timeouts and a list of servers to connect to, but it won’t solve your problem, but could help.