SoftEther VPN User Forum

I want to configure a 2 node home network using a dedicated desktop computer as the VPN server with a connection to my laptop through a wireless router (Trendnet 652BRT v2.1R). Both nodes are running Win7 Professional. The desktop node is connected to the internet through the router as presently connected, the laptop node accesses the router wirelessly. I have configured the VPN server software on the desktop and configured the VPN client on the laptop. Currently I get an error 1 when I try to connect the VPN client to the VPN Server.

Questions:
1. Is the configuration described above possible?
2. The Trendnet router is older and a may not support what I am trying to do or it may not configured correctly?

Once these questions are answered I will no doubt have more.

Thank you all.

Ted

Hello Ted,
It should work, but you might check couple of things:
1. Are the desktop and the laptop connected through the same router? Lets assume, that YES.
2. Are they on the same subnet? Lets assume, that YES.
Can both machines see each other on your home network, and communicate, lets say shares or any other way? Lets assume, that YES.
3. So you probably should check you Win7 firewall on both and add the SE server and SE client to allowed applications.
4. Try to test first with firewalls disabled (OFF) on both machines.
5. If you have any additional firewalls or other security applications, you might try to disable them temporarily to test if they block your connectivity. And later adjust them accordingly to allow traffic from client to server and vice versa.
I have the same setup with a router running dd-wrt, and I had to adjust firewalls only to get it working.
I hope this will help.
Good Luck.
P-B

P-B Very much appreciated, I will check the things that you suggest. The ones you assumed yes are correct.

So I checked the firewalls on both computers, setting allow Softether on both (there are ~6 programs specified, must have been setup automatically on install.

I suspect my router, it is very old and does not support dd-wrt, I checked on their site. I also read in my searching that there may be a need to "forward ports" at the router, router is a Trendnet TEW-652 V2.1.

Trendnet confirms that my router does support VPN "as default" so that suggestS that something else is amiss.

When I look at the VPN Connection on my client machine the status shows as "offline"; Client Adaptor status shows as enabled.

Is this normal before a connection is established?

So I have worked through my issue above, turns out I was using the wrong hostname.

I now am able to connect to my VPN Server through my router (or so I assume since I specified the current DDNS hostname at the bottom of the "Manage VPN Server" page as the client hostname when I set up the VPN Connection at the client laptop).

I now also see two "Internet Access" adaptors in the bottom left hand of my laptop screen - one is my router, the other is shown as "Unidentified network". I assume this is the VPN connection.

How can I tell which is actually being used for outgoing traffic?

Is my real IP address now "masked"?

Thanks.

Hello Ted,
VPN client has its own adapter.
To find out its name look at the bottom part of your VPN Client interface, and there are listed adapter names.
To test if your traffic goes through VPN adapter, download Wireshark from https://www.wireshark.org/download.html
and once you have it installed, after starting it, there will be listed all network adapters installed on your machine.
Find and choose VPN Client adapter to analyze traffic on it, and you will see what goes through it.
Although with "Unidentified network" it might be tricky on Windows 7-10. If traffic runs through, you are lucky, if not you will have to google how to troubleshoot "Unidentified network".
Good luck.
P-B

You can choose the adapter by metric value.