Asus- Open VPN and reaching network drives

[micaaronfl56]

Hello All, I have an Asus RT-AX3000 and I use open VPN configured when I'm on the road. I have a few network drives and I can connect to them fine when I am on my home network. When I am on the road and I connect with OpenVPN and try to access the network share I get this error, do I need to configure something in the Asus router's VPN settings to allow network sharing? or is there a windows network setting that isnt right. note though when im on vpn i can get to internal ip address pages- example blue iris camera software, but if i ping my desktop where the network shares live it times out... been trying to resolve this for months, greatful for any help.

 

[ColinTaylor]

How are you accessing these drives, are you using a mapped drive? If so try disconnecting the mapped drive and creating it again using the host's IP address rather than its name.

 

[micaaronfl56]

Colin, thank you for your reply I will try that today, but I'm not sure if it will work since I can't even ping the desktop IP address where the network drive lives

 

[ColinTaylor]

... but I'm not sure if it will work since I can't even ping the desktop IP address where the network drive lives

Sorry, I missed that point in your first post. Is this a Windows file server? The default Windows Firewall rules for a Private network profile is to only respond to requests from the local subnet. As you're using a VPN your inbound traffic will be perceived as "not local" and therefore be blocked.

One way around this is to go into Windows Firewall Advanced settings. Then find the private profile rule for "File and Printer Sharing (SMB-In)" and add the subnet of your VPN connection to the Scope/Remote IP address. You could do the same for "File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In)".

See the example image below. Change the subnet from 10.8.100.0/24 to be whatever you're using for your VPN.

 

[micaaronfl56]

Thanks Colin!

Yes this is a windows 10 desktop -

i think this is what i am missing your the best, one more question as I'm not super techi - how do I find the VPN subnets to add? also will these subnets constantly change?

 

[ColinTaylor]

I don't know where to look for that in stock firmware. I use Merlin's firmware which is a bit different. On that in the VPN Server / Server 1 > Advanced Settings I can see the VPN Subnet / Netmask is 10.8.0.0/255.255.255.0. For the second VPN server instance it's 10.16.0.0/255.255.255.0.

Have a look at your VPN client details after it's connected. If it has an address of something like 10.8.0.2 then it's likely to be the same as Merlin's.

 

[micaaronfl56]

Colin good news.

Ahhhh almost there! I added 10.8.0.6/24 to ALL of the inbound rules available that's under Echo Request - ICMPv4-In as well as SMB-in (Hoping there is no security risks with that im assuming there isn't). I can now successfully ping the desktop! but when I try to get to a network drive still getting this:

 

[ColinTaylor]

Just to be pedantic change your firewall rule scope from 10.8.0.6/24 to 10.8.0.0/24 as the latter is the correct notation. But that shouldn't make a difference to your SMB problem.

I suggest you disconnect that mapped drive and reboot your PC. Then try to access the share again using the IP address rather than it's host name.

 

[micaaronfl56]

Hi Colin, I am going to try this tomorrow, thank you again!