OpenVPN and iOS woes - cannot access local LAN

[Boatswain]

I've been happily running Merlin and a PPTP VPN for a long time, but iOS 10 forced me to move to OpenVPN. I've made several attempts and spent an hour reading the docs and looking through the forum and Google to no avail. OpenVPN works but my iPhone can't reach PCs on the LAN.

I have a default TUN config setup and my iPhone connects fine via OpenVPN as 10.8.0.2. I have "Push LAN to clients" and "Direct clients to redirect Internet traffic" selected, which as I understand it should enable my iPhone to access local LAN resources.

From a PC on my LAN e.g. 10.4.0.25 I can ping the iPhone via the VPN at 10.8.0.2 with no problems. But the reverse doesn't work - the iPhone cannot ping or connect to anything on the local LAN. I've checked Windows firewall and that doesn't appear to be an issue.

It's not clear what the Merlin "Firewall" setting does but it's set to the default of Auto. I checked the router firewall log and I can't see any relevant dropped packets so I don't think that's the problem.

Am I missing something obvious? Thanks for any help.

 

[martinr]

From your phone, and when connected by OpenVPN to your router, does entering the router's internal IP address (at 10.4.0.1?) into a browser bring up the login page of the router's webui?


I assume you are sat at home with your iPhone connecting by 3g via OpenVPN to your router. If so, did you switch off the iPhone's wireless connection? (I doubt if that has any effect but might as well ask.). And you are using IP addresses not hostnames?

 

[Zirescu]

If you're using Windows 10, the default of the firewall is to not respond to ping requests so you'll need to allow that first. If you enable the Respond to DNS and Advertise DNS to clients you should also be able to connect to your PC via name as it reports to the Router.

 

[Boatswain]

Thanks for the responses. I had already double checked the wifi was off and that Win10 was set to reply to a ping.

I solved the issue by moving the VPN IP pool from 10.8.0.x to 10.4.1.x and now I have access. Perhaps it was routing?