ASUS RT AC88U with Merlin and VPN Bypassing

[Alaska_av8r]

I have a small home network using this router with Merlin installed. I have a VPN setup with ExpressVPN using OpenVPN on the router. I have done the VPN for security and privacy reasons but have ran into a stumbling block. I live here in the US and now find that I cannot access Amazon. I have tried all suggestions that ExpressVPN can provide, changing servers etc but to no avail Amazon blocks me everytime.

I am an Amazon Prime junkie and order something almost weekly and the wife and I end up watching prime movies on the weekend using either a Roku or Amazon Firestick. I was finally able to get through to amazon's website so I can at least still order stuff but cannot watch movies.

I am pretty much a novice on a lot of this but I have found out how to allow specific devices etc to bypass the VPN (Roku etc) and also saw that I could allow any traffic going outbound to a specific website bypass the VPN. The problem is when I do this expressvpn warns me of a DNS leak or something like that.

I don't really know what that means or what the danger is. So for me it is a convenience to have the VPN on the router (instead of installing expressvpn on everything else) but the frustrations with Amazon make it a severe inconvenience to turn the VPN off if I want to watch a movie.

What are the dangers of routing Amazon's website outside the VPN?

thank you
tim

 

[agilani]

I have a small home network using this router with Merlin installed. I have a VPN setup with ExpressVPN using OpenVPN on the router. I have done the VPN for security and privacy reasons but have ran into a stumbling block. I live here in the US and now find that I cannot access Amazon. I have tried all suggestions that ExpressVPN can provide, changing servers etc but to no avail Amazon blocks me everytime.

I am an Amazon Prime junkie and order something almost weekly and the wife and I end up watching prime movies on the weekend using either a Roku or Amazon Firestick. I was finally able to get through to amazon's website so I can at least still order stuff but cannot watch movies.

I am pretty much a novice on a lot of this but I have found out how to allow specific devices etc to bypass the VPN (Roku etc) and also saw that I could allow any traffic going outbound to a specific website bypass the VPN. The problem is when I do this expressvpn warns me of a DNS leak or something like that.

I don't really know what that means or what the danger is. So for me it is a convenience to have the VPN on the router (instead of installing expressvpn on everything else) but the frustrations with Amazon make it a severe inconvenience to turn the VPN off if I want to watch a movie.

What are the dangers of routing Amazon's website outside the VPN?

thank you
tim

There is more danger using legitimate sites through a vpn at home and it will definitely be slower than your native network with increased latency and lower throughput. I'd keep the vpn for your torrent and extra curricular activities

Most large companies are implementing proxy blocks to reduce fraud and to enforce regional access.

 

[Alaska_av8r]

thanks for the response

 

[Alaska_av8r]

Any other ideas how to handle this situation and stop the leak but still be able to access Amazon?

 

[biglo]

I am having the same issue with expressVPN as well. The thing is when I use the VPN service using the L2TP protocol I have no issues with netflix and prime but the problem I now have with this is my speed is cut in half. When I use the Openvpn protocol Netflix tells me that I'm behind a proxy, I rather use OpenVPN because the speed is much faster but it seems like there's an issue here. I will try the PTPP protocol when I get home to see what the speeds are looking like but I know its not as secure as the OpenVPN or the L2TP. BTW I use the wasington server.

 

[Alaska_av8r]

Ok thanks I have manged to solve, not sure how the dns leak, I will look at the Wash Server and see if Prime Movies will work.

 

[biglo]

Ok thanks I have manged to solve, not sure how the dns leak, I will look at the Wash Server and see if Prime Movies will work.

Sounds good, keep me posted.