Starting OpenVPN with TAP Client seems to crash RT-AX86U

[sojomy]

@AndrewL733 thank you so much for the reply and for all of the info!

I'll look into the Beelink systems, but I'm doing a user-to-router VPN with a few users that just connect to the OpenVPN in the Asus Router. There were no problems when we were using the RT-AC86U, but we just upgraded to the AX version, and I only have 1 user that is not working on the new router. I also just saw that you were also using the same router I was, the PRO version of the AX. I'm wondering if the non-PRO version might not have the same issue. I might try to find one of them and return the PRO router if that fixes the issue. Or I might just setup a software-based VPN on one of the systems to get the one user working remotely again, and hopefully if they replace their laptop soon we won't have the same issue for them or anyone else in the future.

I don't have much (barely any) experience with Linux, but one of my former co-workers was telling me about the approach you're using with PCs handling the site-to-site VPN. I'll talk to him about it some more though. Can you use just one linux PC on the internal network side and have external clients connect to it with OpenVPN or other VPN client software? Would that allow external clients to access all resources (network shares, RDP Servers, printers) just like they were inside the office? I was only able to get that to work with the Asus OpenVPN Server by using TAP, it would not work when using TUN.

 

[seabass]

Hey @sojomy,

I just brushed off the dust from my GT-AX11000 and updated the firmware to 3004.388.4.

As soon as I start up my VPN client peer the TAP VPN is established and unfortunately after 5-10 seconds of successful and fully working (tested) connectivity my VPN server then crashes and reboots.

If left unattended, this cycle repeats indefinitely...

Unfortunately, it seems the latest GPL that was included in this new release didn't fix the TAP VPN problem for AX class routers

I also tried turning off the 2.4Ghz radio per your suggestion and the crashing behavior remains exactly the same.

I'll be switching back to my AC5300 until hopefully one day this is fixed.

Sorry to confirm the bad news...

 

[sojomy]

@AndrewL733 Dang, I was really hoping you'd be able to duplicate the problem going away when the 2.4GHz radio was disabled - I figured that would help Merlin or someone at Asus fix the problem with that correlation. It is so strange that it works just fine for me when the 2.4 Radio is disabled though. I can't imagine them having anything to do with each other. But I also can't figure out why it works fine from my workstation at my office, but not from another user's laptop. I don't know what the client could be sending to the OpenVPN server that other clients are not sending, even clients with the same version of OpenVPN using the same client.ovpn file.

I'm going to check with all of my other clients to see if I can find someone else with the AX router, but I think most of them all have the AC routers now. I do have 1 client that I'm supposed to switch to the RT-AX86U next week, so when I get that setup, I'll see if it's having the same issue. If not, I'll try to have this current client laptop connect to it. If only this client's laptop causes the issue with 2 identical routers, it has to be something different about this client's system, but I don't know what it would be. Maybe I'll try to have them plug in a USB wifi adapter and connect through that to see if it has something to do with the internal wifi adapter that they're currently using.