Arch Linux

SpacePirate

Member

Registered: 2013-09-16

Posts: 55

VPN connection to provider trouble...

Hi,

I have a network setup which requires me to connect to my ISP using VPN (PPtP or OpenVPN).
In order to have an Internet connection on devices without configuration I run OpenVPN on the router (PPtP did not work for some reason).
Unfortunatly this limits my bandwidth to 2MiB/s, which is enough most time, but for huge downloads I`d like to have more.

When I try to connect my PC directly to the ISP I run in two issues:
1.:  Using OpenVPN works, but it breaks the OpenVPN connection running on the router so that I have to restart it.

2.: The alternative is PPPoE which works on windows. On my Arch machine I tried to configure it with netctl since I dont use NetworkManager. I copied the example config and adjusted it:

Description='<description>'
Interface=pppoe0
Connection=pppoe
User='<username>@<host>'
Password='<password>'

# Always keep a connection established
ConnectionMode='persist'
# Establish connection on demand
#ConnectionMode='demand'
#IdleTimeout=300

# Use default route provided by the peer (default: true)
#DefaultRoute=true
# Use DNS provided by the peer (default: true)
#UsePeerDNS=true

# Override default LCP parameters from /etc/ppp/options
#LCPEchoInterval=15
#LCPEchoFailure=10

# PPPoE options - experts only
#
# PPPoE service name
#PPPoEService=''
# PPPoE access concentrator name
#PPPoEAC=''
# Attach to existing session (sessid:macaddr)
#PPPoESession=''
# Only connect to specified MAC address
#PPPoEMAC=''
# Enable IPv6 support
#PPPoEIP6=yes

When I start this profile it fails, I get this output on journalctl:

Jan 03 19:01:59 <myHost> systemd[1]: Starting Networking for netctl profile padnet...
-- Subject: Unit netctl@vpn.service has begun with start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- 
-- Unit netctl@vpn.service has begun starting up.
Jan 03 19:01:59 <myHost> network[10429]: Starting network profile 'vpn'...
Jan 03 19:01:59 <myHost> network[10429]: Interface 'pppoe0' does not exist
Jan 03 19:01:59 <myHost> network[10429]: Failed to bring the network up for profile 'vpn'
Jan 03 19:01:59 <myHost> systemd[1]: netctl@vpn.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 03 19:01:59 <myHost> systemd[1]: Failed to start Networking for netctl profile padnet.
-- Subject: Unit netctl@vpn.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- Documentation: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/catalog/be02cf6855d2428ba40df7e9d022f03d
-- 
-- Unit netctl@vpn.service has failed.
-- 
-- The result is failed.
Jan 03 19:01:59 <myHost> systemd[1]: Unit netctl@vpn.service entered failed state.

It would be great if you guys could help me!

Edit: Attached image for illustration:

Last edited by SpacePirate (2014-01-03 18:12:00)

sluckxz

Member

Registered: 2012-09-04

Posts: 10

Re: VPN connection to provider trouble...

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Op … al_startup

I find personally that when getting OpenVPN setup it's handy to use manual startup so I can see real time errors and warnings.

Actually I mostly run OpenVPN manually in a screen session. 

I thought maybe you could monitor your firewall and pc client to see what triggers the drop on the firewall.

Sorry never used PPtP.

Your post seems lite on details.  If you provide more I would be suprised if you didnt get more participation.

This is an isp connection?  Interesting, I havent encountered an ISP that limits connections to tunnels.  Granted I have mostly used main stream providers.
Does your account provide multiple simultaneous connections?
What router/firewall?  If you cant get good logs from it what happens when simply connecting 2 separate machines you can get good logs from?  Perhaps you can find why OpenVPN drops from that.

Pretty great writeup on
Performance Analysis of OpenVPN on a Consumer Grade Router

Last edited by sluckxz (2014-01-05 00:11:55)

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: VPN connection to provider trouble...

Unfortunatly this limits my bandwidth to 2MiB/s

Why?