Get notified when VPN client connection fails

[popxunga]

Hi ...
I have a Proton Client VPN configured on my AC88U (I'm using an OpenVPN Proton VPN server).
For some unknown reason (at least for me), since June 1st, the VPN connection to the NL Proton VPN server started to fail with an authentication error. Meanwhile, I created a 2nd VPN client configuration pointing to an US Proton VPN Server and all is good.
Is there a way to get notified when such a VPN client connection fails ?
Thanks.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Hi ...
I have a Proton Client VPN configured on my AC88U (I'm using an OpenVPN Proton VPN server).
For some unknown reason (at least for me), since June 1st, the VPN connection to the NL Proton VPN server started to fail with an authentication error. Meanwhile, I created a 2nd VPN client configuration pointing to an US Proton VPN Server and all is good.
Is there a way to get notified when such a VPN client connection fails ?
Thanks.

I have not seeing anything do that yet, but you could use VPNMON-R2 to keep your connection going so you don't have to worry about it being down?

 

[popxunga]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think that the router firmware does it already when the VPN client is configured to automatically start upon router startup (which is the case here). So unless that tool has some notification capabilities, I do not see any reason to add it to my setup which btw doesn't use any addons (and I'd like to keep it this way).

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think that the router firmware does it already when the VPN client is configured to automatically start upon router startup (which is the case here). So unless that tool has some notification capabilities, I do not see any reason to add it to my setup which btw doesn't use any addons (and I'd like to keep it this way).

Right... it might try to start it, but if it doesn't have any luck, you're dead in the water. Or if your VPN provider decides to shut the server down mid-session, it will try to reconnect to that same server, and you're dead in the water... it happens, more frequently than you think. That's why I built VPNMON.

 

[popxunga]

Right... it might try to start it, but if it doesn't have any luck, you're dead in the water. Or if your VPN provider decides to shut the server down mid-session, it will try to reconnect to that same server, and you're dead in the water... it happens, more frequently than you think. That's why I built VPNMON.

With all the respect, I honestly do not understand how such a tool would help when the authentication process fails consistently due to some constant problem on VPN provider service.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

With all the respect, I honestly do not understand how such a tool would help when the authentication process fails consistently due to some constant problem on VPN provider service.

In a normal situation, you would populate each of your 5 VPN slots with different Proton VPN endpoints. You would test each one to make sure they are all able to make a stable connection. At this point, you want to install/configure and run VPNMON. It will loop every 60 seconds and check to make sure your VPN is still connected. If for some reason, Proton VPN kicks you off your connection to the US, then VPNMON will kick in, recognize that you dropped and need to reconnect, and make a connection to NL. Now lets say the NL Proton VPN server gives you an authentication error for some odd reason, VPNMON will then try another slot... and keeps going down the list until it makes a successful connection. You can either have it choose random connection, using the lowest ping (usually the closest to your WAN), or the round-robin method.

 

[popxunga]

In a normal situation, you would populate each of your 5 VPN slots with different Proton VPN endpoints. You would test each one to make sure they are all able to make a stable connection. At this point, you want to install/configure and run VPNMON. It will loop every 60 seconds and check to make sure your VPN is still connected. If for some reason, Proton VPN kicks you off your connection to the US, then VPNMON will kick in, recognize that you dropped and need to reconnect, and make a connection to NL. Now lets say the NL Proton VPN server gives you an authentication error for some odd reason, VPNMON will then try another slot... and keeps going down the list until it makes a successful connection. You can either have it choose random connection, using the lowest ping (usually the closest to your WAN), or the round-robin method.

True, but if all the 5 VPN endpoints are in constant failure (unlikely but not impossible), depending on how the VPN is being used, it might remain unnoticed until you login into the router admin page and click the VPN tab (that's what happened to me this morning).

 

[Viktor Jaep]

True, but if all the 5 VPN endpoints are in constant failure (unlikely but not impossible), depending on how the VPN is being used, it might remain unnoticed until you login into the router admin page and click the VPN tab (that's what happened to me this morning).

If that's the case, I would recommend moving on from Proton VPN... I've never experienced authentication issues before on Nord. Every so often, servers will go down, but it will just move on to the next one.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Good news, @popxunga... I've been poking around ProtonVPN since our conversation, and found that they have an API available: https://api.protonmail.ch/vpn/logicals

This gives me the ability to bake more functionality and capabilities into VPNMON so you can randomly choose different countries, exit points within a country, or reset based on server loads... I'll get this on my to-do list and offer this as another compatible VPN provider.

 

[Aiadi]

In a normal situation, you would populate each of your 5 VPN slots with different Proton VPN endpoints. You would test each one to make sure they are all able to make a stable connection. At this point, you want to install/configure and run VPNMON. It will loop every 60 seconds and check to make sure your VPN is still connected. If for some reason, Proton VPN kicks you off your connection to the US, then VPNMON will kick in, recognize that you dropped and need to reconnect, and make a connection to NL. Now lets say the NL Proton VPN server gives you an authentication error for some odd reason, VPNMON will then try another slot... and keeps going down the list until it makes a successful connection. You can either have it choose random connection, using the lowest ping (usually the closest to your WAN), or the round-robin method.

Can the script disconnect (disable) a single WireGuard client altogether if the latter fails and route all traffic through the regular ISP tunnel as if VPN has never been installed?

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Can the script disconnect (disable) a single WireGuard client altogether if the latter fails and route all traffic through the regular ISP tunnel as if VPN has never been installed?

Uhmmm nope.