Astrill VPN on Merlin

[Steve77r]

I've been trying over the last few days to get a VPN setup on my router, originally I was on DD-WRT but switched to Merlin on the advice of Astrill support. So following their advice I installed Merlin which I must say I proffer to the DD-WRT which was way to complex for my needs. Anyway I just contacted Astrill support again for advice on if its best to use their applet installed in Merlin or best to setup manually as I have read conflicting things and got the response they dont know because they only support OpenVPN on DD-WRT or Tomato even though they told me to switch??

Is anyone also using Merlin and Astrill VPN? if so did you use the Astill applet or did you configure it manually?

 

[CaptainSTX]

I've been trying over the last few days to get a VPN setup on my router, originally I was on DD-WRT but switched to Merlin on the advice of Astrill support. So following their advice I installed Merlin which I must say I proffer to the DD-WRT which was way to complex for my needs. Anyway I just contacted Astrill support again for advice on if its best to use their applet installed in Merlin or best to setup manually as I have read conflicting things and got the response they dont know because they only support OpenVPN on DD-WRT or Tomato even though they told me to switch??

Is anyone also using Merlin and Astrill VPN? if so did you use the Astill applet or did you configure it manually?

In the earlier versions of Merlin their applet which you can install as a tab in Merlin was the way to go. Starting at some point it became more complicated to install but Astrill had a good step by step process for performing the installation. I haven't tried it for the last couple versions of Merlin so I'm not sure if their instructions are up to date. The Astrill app running under Merlin had many nice features that made it easy to specify which clients and apps were tunneled and which were not.

The issue with using the Astrill app under Merlin was every time you switched or upgraded Merlin you had to reinstall the app.

Merlin/Asus have added many of the useful features that Astrill had to their VPN setup. I currently run Astrill as one of my three VPN clients on an AC1900P. Astrill seems to keep one step ahead of Netflix in having some servers with IP ranges that Netflix doesn't block. I haven't needed to test Astrill vs Netflix in the last couple of months so this might not be the case any more.

My suggestion is to test Astrill's app on Merlin if you have the patience to install it. Check out the features and see how it works for you then reload Merlin's firmware and see if straight Merlin can do what you need and how the VPN speeds compare. Running Merlin without the Astrill app is certainly cleaner.

I primarily use Astrill now on Iphones, Ipads and other mobile devices because their app for these devices seems to be very good.

For pure speed for my VPN clients on my home network PIA is faster.

 

[unclebuk]

Hello,

I installed and tried the Astrill applet and performed a manual install as well on an Asus AC-86U. The applet performed quite well with simple & quick install. Performance seemed similar with both methods. I did find Astrill VPN speeds to be quite fast compared to a few other VPN providers.

 

[Vincent.Zhang]

In the earlier versions of Merlin their applet which you can install as a tab in Merlin was the way to go. Starting at some point it became more complicated to install but Astrill had a good step by step process for performing the installation. I haven't tried it for the last couple versions of Merlin so I'm not sure if their instructions are up to date. The Astrill app running under Merlin had many nice features that made it easy to specify which clients and apps were tunneled and which were not.

The issue with using the Astrill app under Merlin was every time you switched or upgraded Merlin you had to reinstall the app.

Merlin/Asus have added many of the useful features that Astrill had to their VPN setup. I currently run Astrill as one of my three VPN clients on an AC1900P. Astrill seems to keep one step ahead of Netflix in having some servers with IP ranges that Netflix doesn't block. I haven't needed to test Astrill vs Netflix in the last couple of months so this might not be the case any more.

My suggestion is to test Astrill's app on Merlin if you have the patience to install it. Check out the features and see how it works for you then reload Merlin's firmware and see if straight Merlin can do what you need and how the VPN speeds compare. Running Merlin without the Astrill app is certainly cleaner.

I primarily use Astrill now on Iphones, Ipads and other mobile devices because their app for these devices seems to be very good.

For pure speed for my VPN clients on my home network PIA is faster.

Hey CaptainSTX do you mind to share your firmware and Astrill setup on AC1900P? I just got mine yesterday and flashed the newest dd-wrt firmware then installed Astrill applet successfully (I can see it on "My Page" under the status tab). However, when I trying to connect, that page just hangs there, so I have to telnet in and tail the log at /dev/astrill/openvpn.log, it shows an error like /sbin/route add failed (File already exists), which turns out it's not "File already exists" but "route already exists" after some googling, but remove that route doesn't help.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Hey CaptainSTX do you mind to share your firmware and Astrill setup on AC1900P? I just got mine yesterday and flashed the newest dd-wrt firmware then installed Astrill applet successfully (I can see it on "My Page" under the status tab). However, when I trying to connect, that page just hangs there, so I have to telnet in and tail the log at /dev/astrill/openvpn.log, it shows an error like /sbin/route add failed (File already exists), which turns out it's not "File already exists" but "route already exists" after some googling, but remove that route doesn't help.

Astrill is very straight forward.

1. You log into your ASUS account online and create a download certificate file. This ZIP file contains an ovpn file for all of Astrll's servers world wide.

2. You download the file to a PC and unzip it.

ALL THE FOLLOWING STEPS ARE DONE WHILE SIGNED INTO YOUR ROUTER:

3. You go into your ASUS router and select the VPN Tab and then the VPN client page and decide which VPN client you want to run Astrill on.

4. You then go to the import.ovpn file and select which server you want to connect to from the 200 or so ovpn files you downloaded and unzipped.

5. You then click the upload button.

6. You then turn it on using the on off button.

It should be running and you are connected. The custom configuration file created automatically in this process seems to work fine as is. I have tried tweaking it but haven't seen any improvement in performance by adding fast-io, adjusting buffer sizes, encryption, etc. I am running Astrill on ASUS 1900P.

7. You then can go down to the advanced settings and select which options suit your needs. I use policy rules and specify which clients use the tunnel and which connect using the WAN. I also DO NOT BLOCK routed clients if the VPN goes down as while the security the VPN offers is important it is more important that certain IoT devices remain connected to the Internet even in the case of a tunnel crash. The choice is yours to make.

8. If you decide to change Astrill server you just turn off the one that is running, upload a new ovpn file. The turn it on again.

9. As an option you could use a different VPN client on each of the multiple VPN clients on your router and just turn one client off and another on. Trying to run multiple VPN clients from Astrill at the same time on the same router will/could create problems since the default port for Astrill seems to be 443.

 

[Beelee]

Astrill is very straight forward.

1. You log into your ASUS account online and create a download certificate file. This ZIP file contains an ovpn file for all of Astrll's servers world wide.

2. You download the file to a PC and unzip it.

ALL THE FOLLOWING STEPS ARE DONE WHILE SIGNED INTO YOUR ROUTER:

3. You go into your ASUS router and select the VPN Tab and then the VPN client page and decide which VPN client you want to run Astrill on.

4. You then go to the import.ovpn file and select which server you want to connect to from the 200 or so ovpn files you downloaded and unzipped.

5. You then click the upload button.

6. You then turn it on using the on off button.

It should be running and you are connected. The custom configuration file created automatically in this process seems to work fine as is. I have tried tweaking it but haven't seen any improvement in performance by adding fast-io, adjusting buffer sizes, encryption, etc. I am running Astrill on ASUS 1900P.

7. You then can go down to the advanced settings and select which options suit your needs. I use policy rules and specify which clients use the tunnel and which connect using the WAN. I also DO NOT BLOCK routed clients if the VPN goes down as while the security the VPN offers is important it is more important that certain IoT devices remain connected to the Internet even in the case of a tunnel crash. The choice is yours to make.

8. If you decide to change Astrill server you just turn off the one that is running, upload a new ovpn file. The turn it on again.

9. As an option you could use a different VPN client on each of the multiple VPN clients on your router and just turn one client off and another on. Trying to run multiple VPN clients from Astrill at the same time on the same router will/could create problems since the default port for Astrill seems to be 443.

Hello CaptainSTX!
I have a Asus RT-C68U running the latest version of Merlin as of 1/14/2019. Everything was working fine but when I tried to go to the router page to turn off Astrill (a program wasn't working through VPN) the Astrill page on the router software was blank and not loading anything visible. The VPN service has stopped working since. I've tried to reboot both VPN router and modem, reinstall the Astrill client, and even reinstall another version of Merlin. The Astrill page continues to be blank and the service not working. I'm not sure what I triggered when i accessed the router page the first time, but I did not turn anything off or change settings, the page has just been blank.
TIA

 

[CaptainSTX]

Hello CaptainSTX!
I have a Asus RT-C68U running the latest version of Merlin as of 1/14/2019. Everything was working fine but when I tried to go to the router page to turn off Astrill (a program wasn't working through VPN) the Astrill page on the router software was blank and not loading anything visible. The VPN service has stopped working since. I've tried to reboot both VPN router and modem, reinstall the Astrill client, and even reinstall another version of Merlin. The Astrill page continues to be blank and the service not working. I'm not sure what I triggered when i accessed the router page the first time, but I did not turn anything off or change settings, the page has just been blank.
TIA

Merlin has updated his firmware to incorporate the newest version of open VPN. To be compatible with these changes you should go to the Astrill web site and sign in. Then download a new certificate zip file containing 264 servers. After you extract the file for the server that you want to use and then upload it into the Merlin VPN client that you want to use and then restart it. No custom tweaks or settings are necessary to get it running. After it is up and running for you you can deccide if you want it to start with boot and if you want to use policy routing.

I just started an Astrill VPN client on my AC1900P running the latest version of Merlin and a freshly downloaded cert file no problems. I tried it with an older cert file and while the VPN client showed it was running I could not connect to the WWW when connected to the router.

Hope this resolves your issues.

 

[eccentric0562]

Hello CaptainSTX!
I have a Asus RT-C68U running the latest version of Merlin as of 1/14/2019. Everything was working fine but when I tried to go to the router page to turn off Astrill (a program wasn't working through VPN) the Astrill page on the router software was blank and not loading anything visible. The VPN service has stopped working since. I've tried to reboot both VPN router and modem, reinstall the Astrill client, and even reinstall another version of Merlin. The Astrill page continues to be blank and the service not working. I'm not sure what I triggered when i accessed the router page the first time, but I did not turn anything off or change settings, the page has just been blank.
TIA

Hi, Beelee, I think the reason is this.

RT-AX86U Pro Astrill VPN applet issue

Thanks for letting me know, I will talk to customer support to resolve my issue with astrill vpn applet. Hey there. Just wondering, did you get it sorted? I just recieved the AX88U PRO, also here in China, and was going to install the Astrill applet, but now I'm concerned there will be extra...

www.snbforums.com

 

[RMerlin]

You are responding to a 5 years old thread...