Asus Merlin - Nord VPN (Always On)

[SL_warrior]

I am running RT-AC66U, with Asus Merlin. I subscribed to Nord and set it up according to their instructions on the website. The connection worked, stayed up for about a day, and would drop usually a ping time out error. Contacted support, was told that's quite normal..... Yes, sometimes there's ISP issues etc, however should not be dropping like the way it did.

Researched for a couple of days, and now have a stable set up. In fact hasn't dropped in over a week.
Nord isn't a bad provider, i think the config of the router needs to be solid, or it's not going to work.

Anyone that needs help, or wants to see my setup let me know, happy to share the settings, config file etc.
Happy to share step by step.

I did the same setup on RT-AC86U and that's been solid as well.

 

[Jerie-]

I'm curious. I have NordVPN as well. Connection has been solid for months but as of late, have lost connection a few times and forced to seek out and different servers. May I see your setup? I've never really had the need to modify their ovpn file in a while. Thanks.

 

[SL_warrior]

Just to add, Nord also does a TLS renegotiation every hour - this is done on the sever side, to ensure perfect forward secrecy for the static session key. Leave these values to "-1" or default on Asus router.

Also, TCP/UDP timeouts can happen every few days due to your ISP going down, or if the VPN sever is under heavy load, the pings could be delayed.
No VPN ever has 100% up time, however its reasonable to expect 5 - 10 days without a Ping Time out.

To avoid any leaks, what i have done is set mode to "Exclusive" and enabled the VPN kill switch.

If you need help with setting up kill switch, let me know.

 

[Jerie-]

Liked your original reply with example of your config file you originally posted yesterday. Think that could be helpful to others. Any ways, fixed my problem. Apparently it was server maintenance. I'm able to reconnect to original server without issue. And yes, no VPN is 100% up. Last fall, or mid summer, NordVPN experienced a full network crash... all services were offline for a while.

 

[ODISEO123]

Just to add, Nord also does a TLS renegotiation every hour - this is done on the sever side, to ensure perfect forward secrecy for the static session key. Leave these values to "-1" or default on Asus router.

Also, TCP/UDP timeouts can happen every few days due to your ISP going down, or if the VPN sever is under heavy load, the pings could be delayed.
No VPN ever has 100% up time, however its reasonable to expect 5 - 10 days without a Ping Time out.

To avoid any leaks, what i have done is set mode to "Exclusive" and enabled the VPN kill switch.

If you need help with setting up kill switch, let me know.

Hi @SL_warrior
I would be interested in hearing about the kill switch feature and some of the advanced settings.
I am running a RT-AC68U with 384.12