Latest Merlin FW for an RT-AC66U_B1: unexpected DNS using OpenVPN clients

[Chuckles67]

I have been using RT-AC66U_B1 with Merlin FW 380.68_4.

My setup has two OpenVPN clients with different VPN providers (PIA and Ironsocket): both VPN Clients are set to Accept DNS Configuration = Exclusive.

DNS Filtering is set Off.

LAN DHCP is set to use DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

What I have observed with Merlin FW 380.68_4 is, depending on how I set IP addresses, devices either use: the default LAN DHCP settings with DNS set to 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4; or the first VPN client native DNS server; or the second VPN client native DNS server. This was the expected behaviour for my setup and can be tested using www.ipleak.net

However, when I updated to the latest Merlin FW 380.69 a device connected through the VPN client stopped using the native DNS server. This was a big surprise, and not what I need in my setup. So I had to roll back to Merlin FW 380.68_4 which restored the expected DNS behaviour exclusive to each VPN client and associated VPN service.

Could this be a bug or am I misunderstanding how to force the DNS per individual VPN client/VPN service?

 

[RMerlin]

Exclusive means that the clients will always use the DNS that is provided by your VPN provider. There was actually a bug in 380.68 where it would give priority to DNSFilter servers over those of VPN Exclusive mode, this was fixed in 380.69. VPN Clients set to Exclusive mode will always use the DNS provided by the VPN server.

If you don't want your VPN clients to use the VPN server's DNS, then you must disable Exclusive mode, and use one of the other modes.

 

[Chuckles67]

Thanks
But the point I made was that with latest FW, VPN client did not use the expected VPN Server DNS, despite the Exclusive setting. So I had to roll back to the earlier FW. I'll test again.

 

[Chuckles67]

Update: I tested again with the latest FW, and did not see the same problem. I'll continue using latest FW. Thanks

 

[Chuckles67]

Everything working fine with exclusive DNS server using the latest FW 380.69
(=> I'm not sure what happened earlier. Perhaps the VPN client had not connected when I ran my earlier test)