Asus Router OpenVPN vs. PPTP VPN

VPN
1

Hi All,

I have an Asus router that has both OpenVPN and PPTP VPN on it. When I first got the router, I enabled the OpenVPN on it so I can access my home network when I’m away from, like at work or something. I am not able to ping by hostname, but I can ping by IP. I was playing around with what the PPTP VPN was, and after setting it up, I can ping by both hostname and iP. What’s going on here? I’ve attached screenshots: OpenVPN Screenshot and PPTP VPN Screenshot respectively.

What’s going on here?

Just so you everyone is aware, I do have a large background in IT and networking, I have my own home lab with an ESXi server with a Windows Server 2016 VM that has both DHCP and DNS as well as Active Directory running on it.

Thanks in advance for the help!

-Mike

Edit: See my comment for links to the screenshot…I couldn’t attach the pictures -_-

2

I do have a large background in IT and networking = See my comment for links to the screenshot…I couldn’t attach the pictures ;

3

You may need to push a dhcp option with DOMAIN and SEARCH with your internal domain name in your openvpn server.conf.

I have something like:

push "dhcp-option DNS x.x.x.x" (where x.x.x.x is my router and DHCP server)
push "dhcp-option DOMAIN internal.mydomain.com"
push "dhcp-option SEARCH internal.mydomain.com"
4

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DzA_F4hgUdeAdS-AqWVIVc-to2N8bfHy/view?usp=sharing- OpenVPN

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VZTzFxdTySGvpBjPqs_-2oB37ReixxQv/view?usp=sharing- PPTP VPN

5

I wouldn’t be using PPTP as it’s not a secure protocol for VPN.

One thing I’ve noticed is that Windows 10 has a DNS priority issue when using a VPN.

Plenty of results on google, one such example: https://superuser.com/questions/1177663/setting-dns-servers-on-a-vpn-adapter-in-windows-10-has-no-effect

6

Thank you for the advice everyone. I think I fixed it…kind of.

I went into the adapter that OpenVPN installs when you install the client and manually added the DNS server. If I ping my domain, I get a reply. If I ping a hostname, I don’t get a reply. But, if I ping hostname.mydomain, I get a response.

For the most part it is working for what I need it to, but any reason why I can’t just ping hostname and have to ping hostname.domain?

BTW, the whole reason I want to be able to ping by hostname is so that I can RDP into my pc/server when I’m away from home and not have to worry about the IPs.

7

I’m new to Reddit and have never used it before. When I tried to go to the pictures tab, I got a warning that said “Please fix the above requirements”. There were none to fix.