VPN on RT-AX88U-Pro

[Jetblue]

I just received and setup a new Asus RT-AX88U-Pro, an upgrade from my prior RT-AC86U which I had been using AsusWrt-Merlin for some time. Just installed 388.3 Beta on the new RT-AX88U-Pro. I attempted reinstalling OpenVPN using the same provider, ExpressVPN. The VPN Client config went well, connected to the VPN, but it has a persistent DNS leak. After spending 2 hours with ExpressVPN tech support, they really had no answers (some DNS config experiments).

Resolution ideas might be:
1. Use Wireguard instead of OVPN?
2. Try Surfshark instead of ExpressVPN?
3. Try Mullvad instead of ExpressVPN?
4. Go back to Asus firmware?

Looking for any direction here. Maybe it makes sense to focus on Wireguard and just pick the best provider, I see now Asus stock is supporting Surfshark.

 

[octopus]

I just received and setup a new Asus RT-AX88U-Pro, an upgrade from my prior RT-AC86U which I had been using AsusWrt-Merlin for some time. Just installed 388.3 Beta on the new RT-AX88U-Pro. I attempted reinstalling OpenVPN using the same provider, ExpressVPN. The VPN Client config went well, connected to the VPN, but it has a persistent DNS leak. After spending 2 hours with ExpressVPN tech support, they really had no answers (some DNS config experiments).

Resolution ideas might be:
1. Use Wireguard instead of OVPN?
2. Try Surfshark instead of ExpressVPN?
3. Try Mullvad instead of ExpressVPN?
4. Go back to Asus firmware?

Looking for any direction here. Maybe it makes sense to focus on Wireguard and just pick the best provider, I see now Asus stock is supporting Surfshark.

Try to set DNS to Exclusive.
Can you remove Beta tag as you don't release any Software.

 

[Jetblue]

That was one of the things that ExpressVPN required, we also tried Strict. After a good rest and thinking about this, I took another look at it. I went ahead and signed up for Surfshark. Long story short, it turns out that the setting which worked was "Relaxed" and "VPN Director". It also required me to make an interface rule for each VPN Connection. Having done that, I was able to succeed with both OVPN and Wireguard. I even went back and pulled the ExpressVPN cert and connected to it with no problem.

What I learned was a couple of things and maybe it can help someone else.
1. Just by creating an interface in VPN Director it does not complete the trick. You must create a universal rule with a selected interface.
2. It's obvious that ExpressVPN has no idea, or no clue of what the VPN Director is and was giving me the wrong instructions for 2 hours.
3. The VPN Director seems to be maybe one of the best things added to this release, it was genius.

I checked the speed differentials and the OPVN speed was about the same between ExpressVPN and Surfshark.
The Surfshark Wireguard speed however, was considerably faster and almost standard Non-VPN LAN speed.

Now my question in the forum will be about VPN Director... still learning it's capabilities.

 

[Sethr]

That was one of the things that ExpressVPN required, we also tried Strict. After a good rest and thinking about this, I took another look at it. I went ahead and signed up for Surfshark. Long story short, it turns out that the setting which worked was "Relaxed" and "VPN Director". It also required me to make an interface rule for each VPN Connection. Having done that, I was able to succeed with both OVPN and Wireguard. I even went back and pulled the ExpressVPN cert and connected to it with no problem.

What I learned was a couple of things and maybe it can help someone else.
1. Just by creating an interface in VPN Director it does not complete the trick. You must create a universal rule with a selected interface.
2. It's obvious that ExpressVPN has no idea, or no clue of what the VPN Director is and was giving me the wrong instructions for 2 hours.
3. The VPN Director seems to be maybe one of the best things added to this release, it was genius.

I checked the speed differentials and the OPVN speed was about the same between ExpressVPN and Surfshark.
The Surfshark Wireguard speed however, was considerably faster and almost standard Non-VPN LAN speed.

Now my question in the forum will be about VPN Director... still learning it's capabilities.

Would you please post your (or an example with bogus names) of the VPN Director settings?