How to create an OpenVPN client to StrongVPN

hammerman

i tried ericab's way and it didn't work.
my pc was still running through the vpn.
i only want specific ip addresses to use the vpn.
i must be missing something . . . .???

hammerman

BUMP !!!

somebody please offer some help here !

if i followed the setup and it works, meaning all traffic is going through the vpn, then how is ericab's solution (reply 21) supposed to work?
yu13096 wanted "only 1 specific internal IP with all the other IPs going through the default gateway."
yet ericab's solution is that all traffic goes through the vpn and then you force one address i.e. netflix to go through the same vpn???
shouldn't it be that all traffic goes through the default gateway and only the netflix address goes through the vpn?

clearly i'm missing something here and i would appreciate some help in setting it so that all traffic goes through the default gateway and individual addresses use the vpn . . . or all traffic goes through the vpn and individual addresses use the default. doesn't matter which one.

thank you.

Meloman

Hi,

I don't know if it could help, but after many time to try to get this functional, it is now OK.

I followed all this howto, except I changed "BF-CBC" to "AES-128-CBC" !

I'm on 2.1 and all is working, gateway is fine and my IP is US (instead of Switzerland)

ovpn-aes-128.png_thumb

ovpn-status.png_thumb

ovpn-gw.png_thumb

dalesd

Thanks so much for this guide.

The VPN provider I'm using has instructions for running on pFsense, but this guide is much better.
Their instructions got the VPN running, but no traffic was passing. This guide showed me the firewall rules I needed to get things really working.

Also, pfSense running on an old HP7900 SFF pc is easily handling my 50/25 Mb/s connection. I gotta thank the hardware forum for that recommendation.

tjabas

@dalesd:

Thanks so much for this guide.

The VPN provider I'm using has instructions for running on pFsense, but this guide is much better.
Their instructions got the VPN running, but no traffic was passing. This guide showed me the firewall rules I needed to get things really working.

Also, pfSense running on an old HP7900 SFF pc is easily handling my 50/25 Mb/s connection. I gotta thank the hardware forum for that recommendation.

may i ask the name of the provider you mentioned?
just cuorious if that provider is cheaper.

tjabas

i Think that i have managed to get strongvpn up and running, but i cant get any internet access, i can ping to different sites from the router but i cant get any internet access to my computers.

if i look at the logs it seems like the vpn is up and running,

please help!

tjabas

no im finally up and running, but the speed tests is not good, i have a 100mb line down, and with openvpn i get only 1mb down, and that sucks, but i have changed location on the strongvpn webbpage, but what do i have to change in my settings in pfsense to get the new location to work?
i tried to change just the ip number but it didnt work.

please help

richardkingsley

For different location / server you need to redo the process again with the new certificate details as each of the servers have a different cert / key. Once you have got it working once it only takes a few minutes.

I am finding that the strongvpn connection very slow and am looking for alternatives

Richard

tjabas

@richardkingsley:

For different location / server you need to redo the process again with the new certificate details as each of the servers have a different cert / key. Once you have got it working once it only takes a few minutes.

I am finding that the strongvpn connection very slow and am looking for alternatives

Richard

thank you, yes im also looking for alternatives, anyone who has any suggestions?

max.i

anyone made this work recently? I'm running 2.1 release from Sep 11 2013 - the virtual machine.

I've disabled every other package I had (dansguardian/squid) and ensured the configuration was exactly as specified. The VPN shows as up, and I can ping the remote addresses but cannot access anything on the internet.

Thanks!

Fevan

Hi got some questions regarding this guide and other variations of other peoples guides.

Is Monitor IP and 208.67.222.222 important ? I did not understand what graph displays and load balancer meant and was not comfortable with using an OpenDNS US based server.
I noticed in a few other peoples guides with strong vpn and other providers they are always adding other firewall rules ie ones for Wan and even strong or their VPN, yet this guide only states you need to add firewall rules for LAN only. The guys that did WAN and VPN firewall rules said otherwise it did not work….
Has any Pfsense+VPN user noticed if they leave there pfsense on 24/7 sometimes it looses connection ?

as in overnight or after 24 or 48hrs ? I have this issue where the following morning if I switch on the PC webpages are not loading, if I wait 3-4 mins it then "jump" starts and works again, I believe the issue is since I leave my pfsense pc switched on 24/7. Rebooting the pfsense box sometimes restarts quicker or sometimes still have to wait 3-4 mins for it to magically come on. My gut tells me the handshake is lost once connection is idle for more then few hours?

any answers to the above are weclome thanks

powerextreme

I am working on this setup. I have gotten to step 10. So far I am able to get the OpenVPN client up and running. I have noticed at this point internet connectivity goes down. DNS still works but can't ping to IP's on the Internet.

I know I am only at step 10 but just curious as to what happened when I started the OpenVPN client service.

Anyone got any ideas?

dawilder

Hi everyone. Total NOOB here.

I've been trying to get a StrongVPN client set up on pfSense latest version (2.1.3).

I tried the initial tutorial by ericab, who started this thread, as well as the tutorial in the link by pkwong. However, after a certain point, the screenshots start to differ slightly (in terms of the options) and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Also, on my machine, it seems to distinguish between IPv4 and IPv6 LANs. Not sure if that is part of my problem. That's above my head at this point. I'm reeeaaaly clueless about this stuff, so your guys hand-holding is really appreciated.

I was able to load all the certificate information and get a positive indication of connection under system logs. One other thing I noticed, when I set up the certificate, I did not get an "in-use" indication within the GUI, like you see for the other one that was already there. Could that be part of the problem?

If there is an updated tutorial, or if it's known that a StrongVPN Client will not work with the latest version of pfSense, I'd greatly appreciate the help.

Thanks!
DW

tucansam

What alternative(s) to StrongVPN have you folks found? I was looking at privateinternetaccess but, like others, the tutorials I find online are for older versions, and as this will be my first time doing something like this, I'm going to need a lot of help.

panz

@tucansam:

What alternative(s) to StrongVPN have you folks found? I was looking at privateinternetaccess but, like others, the tutorials I find online are for older versions, and as this will be my first time doing something like this, I'm going to need a lot of help.

AirVPN works beautifully.

cralesich

Hello,
I can not get openvpn working with strongvpn… No Internet access.

I have squid installed also... I also have my lan ip range set as 10.10.10.1 with the DHCP range of 10.10.10.5-254

I need a config and im willing to pay for it via paypal if need be. $20 USD

I need the following ports forwarded 53-80-25-443-110-2525 to 25 - 587 all tcp/udp

Here is the version of pfsense I am running - pfSense-memstick-2.1.3-RELEASE-amd64-20140501-1552

Thanks in advance for any help.

toyotahead

Perhaps as a newbie to pfSense myself I have miss-understood something concerning the outbound NAT manual / rules.

I have configured as per the guide with only 1 exception. The encryption algorithm i had to employ was: AES-128-CBC (128bit) Going with this algorithm not only allowed my openvpn to establish but also become viable to send / receive data over.

My problem is just like everyone else who has posted on this topic. ALL traffic is routed through the vpn across all the networks attached. (currently 7 different subnets NAT'ing)

So if I have read correctly, it sounds like the magic I need to employ happens at the NAT-Outbound-Manual Mappings. If so how do I specify these mappings? When I select manual mappings a number of rules are automaticly generated for all the attached subnets as well as 1 for 127.0.0.0. How and where do I specify to allow only select IP's or policy based exceptions to utilize the VPN while still allowing all regular NAT connections to traverse my regular WAN connection?

Finally, I see that this has been asked in the past but further clarification would be great. Why in the routing section is there the ability to specify a default gateway (typically for the regular WAN) if this does not work? Is this a possible bug?

My installation is:

2.1.4-RELEASE (i386)
built on Fri Jun 20 12:59:29 EDT 2014
FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p16

And it is installed on a watchguard firebox 1250e. Not the nano but full install headless on a hard drive.
Thanks in advance for your help!

toyotahead

I have since doubled up all my manual outbound nat rules to allow NAT to the VPN interface. Then went back to the LAN firewall rule and pointed gateway at my WAN interface. At first the results were good, I was getting my local WAN ip showing up in whatsmyip.com, however after a few minutes and refreshing the page a few times, I see that I am again being directed out the VPN interface…. I am seriously stumped and baffled by this behaviour.....

When my only LAN rules looks like:
IPv4 * * * * * WAN_DHCP none

I traceroute and see:
traceroute whatismyip.com
traceroute to whatismyip.com (141.101.120.14), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.69.1 (192.168.69.1) 0.633 ms 0.619 ms 0.602 ms
2 11.5.192.1 (11.5.192.1) 8.321 ms 12.384 ms 12.460 ms
3 rd1cs-tge1-3-1.ok.shawcable.net (64.59.168.201) 14.144 ms 14.223 ms 14.223 ms
4 rc2wh-tge0-4-0-17.vc.shawcable.net (66.163.76.26) 18.394 ms 18.384 ms *
5 rc6wt-pos0-8-1-0.wa.shawcable.net (66.163.76.130) 22.334 ms 22.406 ms 22.489 ms
6 rc5wt-tge0-10-0-10.wa.shawcable.net (66.163.68.65) 22.489 ms 22.774 ms 22.766 ms
7 six.as13335.com (206.81.81.10) 64.549 ms 35.806 ms 35.852 ms
8 141.101.120.14 (141.101.120.14) 32.500 ms 32.527 ms 32.688 ms

Hop 1 is my local ISP modem/router
Hop 2 I suspect is my ISP internal network
Hop 3 is my ISP's external addy....
etc...

Clearly going through my WAN....

And if i modify my only LAN rule to look like:
IPv4 * * * * * STRONGVPN_VPNV4 none

traceroute whatismyip.com
traceroute to whatismyip.com (141.101.120.15), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 10.8.1.57 (10.8.1.57) 50.940 ms 50.930 ms 55.953 ms
2 10G-207-gtwy.reliablehosting.com (207.204.224.1) 57.507 ms 57.593 ms 57.581 ms
3 10ge2-1.sfo4.reliablehosting.com (216.131.94.241) 63.508 ms 63.632 ms 63.806 ms
4 218.188.105.25 (218.188.105.25) 65.886 ms 65.965 ms 65.952 ms
5 218.189.5.179 (218.189.5.179) 66.017 ms 218.189.5.170 (218.189.5.170) 66.083 ms 218.189.5.147 (218.189.5.147) 66.070 ms
6 d1-21-224-143-118-on-nets.com (118.143.224.21) 229.354 ms d1-13-224-143-118-on-nets.com (118.143.224.13) 214.237 ms d1-9-224-143-118-on-nets.com (118.143.224.9) 225.046 ms
7 d1-46-238-143-118-on-nets.com (118.143.238.46) 212.912 ms 218.189.5.14 (218.189.5.14) 219.428 ms 225.311 ms
8 103.22.203.26 (103.22.203.26) 220.888 ms 214.069 ms 220.438 ms
9 141.101.120.15 (141.101.120.15) 226.410 ms 219.705 ms 226.477 ms

What gives????

edit:
I should also mention that I am using squid. Dunno if that makes a difference or not. I just thought it might have bearing as my trace route packets seem to be routed properly but not the web requests....

toyotahead

ok… a bit closer possibly....

I have uninstalled squid2, and squidguard2.

From a LAN client ip, i can traceroute google.ca and hit my regular WAN gateway. As well http requests are being NAT'd throu regular WAN gateway. This is expected and correct.

However if i ssh into pfsense and traceroute google.ca, it still goes out via the vpn gateway....

Thoughts?

toyotahead

Maybe a bit more clarification as to what I am trying to achieve…

I am trying to get the pfsense box as well as all traffic generated on the lan subnets to still NAT to the shaw gateway. Only select ip's or layer7 detected protocols etc to be NAT'd out the VPN.

I believe that has to do with getting the pfsense box itself to use the default shaw gateway rather than the vpn gateway. Oddly enough in the routing section of pfsense when you specify multiple gateways, there is a box labelled default gateway. I have this set to the shaw gateway. Unfortunately this directive doesn’t seem to be adhered to....?