OpenVPN connection dropping

General
1

Running firmware 8.5.2 on my B One router, my OpenVPN connection (Proton VPN) has recently started to drop. This breaks most of my smart home devices as the VLAN they reside on has its connections routed through the OpenVPN WAN connection. Once the connection is lost, the router tries to reconnect - and it eventually does, but it takes a while. Listed below are some log entries showing this behavior.

I changed the Proton VPN server the router is connecting to, but that didn’t help. Next, I just tried re-booting with firmware 8.5.1. After the reboot the OpenVPN WAN was connected; we’ll see how stable that turns out to be.

Anyone else having problems or suggestions to resolve this? Thanks in advance for any help.

Oct 26 16:43:10 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.14)
Oct 26 15:51:26 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 26 15:37:00 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.14)
Oct 26 14:45:28 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 26 14:08:20 Port: Port 2 (LAN Port 2) status changed (link up, speed 1 Gbps Full Duplex)
Oct 26 14:08:17 Port: Port 2 (LAN Port 2) status changed (link down)
Oct 26 14:08:14 Port: Port 2 (LAN Port 2) status changed (link up, speed 1 Gbps Full Duplex)
Oct 26 14:08:11 Port: Port 2 (LAN Port 2) status changed (link down)
Oct 26 14:08:08 Port: Port 2 (LAN Port 2) status changed (link up, speed 1 Gbps Full Duplex)
Oct 26 11:29:26 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.14)
Oct 26 10:37:49 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 26 10:03:25 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.17)
Oct 26 09:11:32 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 26 08:31:30 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.17)
Oct 26 07:39:55 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 25 17:02:09 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.14)
Oct 25 16:10:22 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 25 08:06:19 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.39)
Oct 25 07:14:28 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 25 06:52:10 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.39)
Oct 25 06:00:21 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 25 05:31:00 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.28)
Oct 25 04:39:15 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 24 19:57:09 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.9)
Oct 24 19:05:21 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 24 11:37:50 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.12)
Oct 24 10:46:01 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 24 09:35:40 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.45)
Oct 24 08:43:47 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 23 20:56:05 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.12)
Oct 23 20:04:27 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
Oct 22 17:23:58 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) connected (10.96.0.9)
Oct 22 16:32:12 WAN: OpenVPN WAN 1 (Priority 1) disconnected
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2

Let me know if its stable it not, I can let you connect to one of our balance 310’s for a day just to see if that connection is stable enough.

3

I ran on 8.5.1 for two days without issue, OpenVPN connection stable. Yesterday morning I rebooted on 8.5.2 and things were good for about six hours before the problem came back. Now I’ve been planning to upgrade firmware to 8.5.3, but think I’ll open a ticket and figure this out first. I had been running 8.5.2 without issue for some time, so???

4

I’ve not used ProtonVPN, I use NordVPN and StrongVPN, but suspect they work similar. I’d be suspicious of the VPN service given what I see in your log. Can you change the server used and update the config file in the OpenVPN setup? Perhaps another server will perform differently? I update my VPN server 2-3 times annually, whenever the service gets a bit wonky. Almost always resolves the wonkiness.

5

I tried three different Proton OpenVPN servers and had problems with each, as well as firmware 8.5.1 and 8.5.2. I opened a ticket with Peplink and a packet capture was done showing the Proton server not responding to connection requests as various ports were tried. That led me to open a ticket with Proton and they were looking into it, when over the weekend the problem magically disappeared. Something changed somewhere and I’m not sure what? But the details in the packet capture seem to point to some kind of Proton problem.

What I have done is change some Outbound Policy rules to point traffic to WAN 1 when the OpenVPN connection is down. That will keep everything working should the gremlin reappear.

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