NordVPN on pfsense 23.09.1

[larryjb]

When I upgraded to 23.09.1 I thought temporarily disabling and re-enabling the VPN would be much easier. However, I'm finding I still need to reboot the router. I know I don't understand router/firewalls very well, but there are some things that just aren't intuitive to me:

1. When I disabled the NordVPN interface, only the WAN_DHCP and WAN_DHCP6 remained in the Gateways on the Dashboard. Yet, when I went to the NordVPN site, I still had a protected connection. Only after I disabled NordVPN under the VPN/OpenVPN/Client did the connection become "unprotected" on the NordVPN site. I thought that if the NordVPN gateway were disable, all traffic would have to go through the WAN and not go through a VPN.

2. After re-enabling the NordVPN interface, then re-enabling NordVPN under VPN/OpenVPN/Client, I could see that NordVPN gateway was online in the Dashboard. Yet, when I went to the NordVPN site, I was "unprotected" as my ISP address was listed. I tried clicking the "restart" icon at the top of the VPN/OpenVPN/Client page, but that did not work. I would have thought that if the NordVPN gateway was online, I should have protection. I had to reboot my pfsense in order to get the protection back.

I suppose my ultimate question is how can I disable, then re-enable the VPN connection without having to reboot the firewall/router?