What's new

Weird issue when using VPN on the network.

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

Karajorma

New Around Here
I have a Asus RT-AC88U as my router connected to a China Telecom Huawei Echolife HG8120C cable modem. The majority of the time my setup seems to work well but I have had intermittant problems when watching videos over a SAMBA connection to other devices on the network where the video will pause for 30-40 seconds and then continue as if nothing happened. Similar things occur with file transfers. Since this only happens once or twice a week I hadn't given it much thought until recently when I started having major VPN issues.

Basically no VPN I have tried (and I've tried 2-3 different companies in the last month) has been able to give me a stable connection. When a neighbour recommended a company he has found to work I started to suspect that the problem might not be the VPN and decided to check if directly connecting my PC to the cable modem changed things. It did.

So far I have tried

  1. Default - Modem ->router->PC all ethernet - VPN connections last from less than a minute to 20-30
  2. Connecting the computer to the cable modem - Rock solid VPN performance.
  3. Removing the PC ->router ethernet cable and connecting by wifi - VPN stays up for between a minute to 30 minutes
So it does seem like the router is to blame for this to me. Especially as I vaguely remember that the QNAP issues started around the time I switched routers from my old Linksys (I'm not certain as I didn't have the QNAP long before switching routers).

Does anyone have any ideas what I can try to solve the issue?
 
I have a Asus RT-AC88U as my router connected to a China Telecom Huawei Echolife HG8120C cable modem. The majority of the time my setup seems to work well but I have had intermittant problems when watching videos over a SAMBA connection to other devices on the network where the video will pause for 30-40 seconds and then continue as if nothing happened. Similar things occur with file transfers. Since this only happens once or twice a week I hadn't given it much thought until recently when I started having major VPN issues.

Basically no VPN I have tried (and I've tried 2-3 different companies in the last month) has been able to give me a stable connection. When a neighbour recommended a company he has found to work I started to suspect that the problem might not be the VPN and decided to check if directly connecting my PC to the cable modem changed things. It did.

So far I have tried

  1. Default - Modem ->router->PC all ethernet - VPN connections last from less than a minute to 20-30
  2. Connecting the computer to the cable modem - Rock solid VPN performance.
  3. Removing the PC ->router ethernet cable and connecting by wifi - VPN stays up for between a minute to 30 minutes
So it does seem like the router is to blame for this to me. Especially as I vaguely remember that the QNAP issues started around the time I switched routers from my old Linksys (I'm not certain as I didn't have the QNAP long before switching routers).

Does anyone have any ideas what I can try to solve the issue?

What firmware version are you using? When was the last time you flashed a new firmware, did a full reset to factory defaults, and then minimally and manually configured the router to secure it and connect to your ISP? Without using a saved backup config file?

Please see my signature for the links for the M&M Config that will get your router into a good/known state again.
 
Sorry, I meant to put that stuff in my first post. I actually tried a lot of things yesterday before coming here.

Firmware is 3.0.0.4.384.45713 as of yesterday. I also did a factory reset after flashing it. I'll try the minimal configuration you suggest though as that isn't something I've tried yet.
 
Okay, minimal configuration appears to be working. I'll slowly introduce things back to the network and see if everything remains stable. Thanks a lot for the help.
 
It's China telecom. Those devices are basically tapped, they got built-in programs to detect VPN usage - don't know exactly how, I've used a TP-Link router before and had the same problem, switching to a different VPN client might help.
 

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top