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VPN doesn't work externally

Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2018 5:03 pm
by linkmaster6
Hi everybody,

I'm new to SoftEther's VPN and have run into a little bit of trouble accessing my VPN externally, hoping someone would be willing to help me out. I am able to connect to the VPN locally but not externally.

At the moment I'm just do a dry bench test at the shop before deploying it at a client's business, so the server I have setup is expendable.
Here is my setup at the moment:

Test Server-
-Running Windows Server 2012 R2 (like my client's), hardware wise it's nothing special just an Acer Aspire X3910 I had laying around the shop.
-Has Softether VPN server installed (I'll get into the setup below)
Test client- Lenovo laptop that has been joined to my test domain, has Softether client installed.

VPN Server Config- Hopefully I'll have all the answers everyone will want to know, this is what I set during each step:
Selected "Remote Access VPN Server" and "Site-to-Site Server or VPN Bridge"
Selected the only NIC in the server as the local bridge
Assigned DDNS Hostname as mstestvpn.softether.net port 5555
Enabled L2TP over IPsec and L2TP with No Encryption
Enabled Azure mstestvpn.vpnazure.net
Created the user sheep and password B@aaaa

VPN Client-
-Connection is set up as mstestvpn.softether.net port 5555 virtual hub: MSTestServer
-Standard Password Authentication sheep B@aaaa

My current network setup to test this out is as follows:
ISP Modem -> Router (Linksys WRT310N) -> Test router (Linksys E1200 with default config) -> My server and Client laptop
In this setup the VPN resolves fine, both have internet access. But if I connect the client to the WRT310N the connection fails to connect with error code 1.
I'm able to ping the mstestvpn.softether.net fine in both situations.

So is there a VPN configuration setting I've flubbed up or am I looking at an issue with a router somewheres?

Re: VPN doesn't work externally

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 6:14 am
by davidebeatrici
Hi,

Are the ports open in your router's firewall?

Re: VPN doesn't work externally

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 2:21 pm
by linkmaster6
I believe they are, here's my reasoning behind it:
From the way I understand this software to work, the vpnserver is available online due to the softether resolving the DDNS to the public IP. So even though the server and client are connected on the same network range/segment, the client's connection goes through all the network devices here to the Softether DDNS servers which then direct it all the way back through those same network devices.
Am I correct in my thinking here?

Re: VPN doesn't work externally

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 7:56 pm
by davidebeatrici
Correct.

However, the NAT traversal feature is only available with mstestvpn.vpnazure.net, you are currently trying to connect to mstestvpn.softether.net.

Re: VPN doesn't work externally

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 8:02 pm
by linkmaster6
Ok, I gave it a try with the azure address and get the same error

Re: VPN doesn't work externally

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 8:51 pm
by linkmaster6
Ok looks like I may have figured my issue with the Azure version. When I set the connection up in the client, I had set the port to 5555 assuming it would be the same as the regular connection but changing it to 443 seems to have gotten me going.