SoftEther VPN User Forum

I want to connect 2 sites so that i can ping and use any IP enabled device on one site from the other site. I followed the instructions for bridging 2 LAN segments with different IP range, points 10.5 Local bridging and cascade connection and 10.6 IP Routing (L3 Switch) of the manual. I'm using version 4.19 Build 9605.

Headquarter Network
The VPN Server is installed on a Windows Server 2012 R2 physical machine with 1 NIC used exclusively for bridging the Virtual Hub to the LAN and the other for normal traffic on the network 172.16.10.0/24. I have a router doing NAT and DHCP.

Branch Network
The VPN Bridge is installed on a Windows 10 physical machine with 1 NIC used exclusively for bridging the Virtual Hub to the LAN and the other for normal traffic on the network 192.168.26.0/24. I also have a router doing NAT and DHCP.

I created a second Virtual Hub on the VPN Server and connected to the first Virtual Hub via a L3 Switch. I then created a cascade connection from the Branch’s VPN Bridge to the second Virtual Hub on the VPN Server. In order for it to connect I created a port forwarding rule on the headquarter’s router. On the L3 Switch I created 2 Virtual Interfaces: 172.16.10.254 for the first Virtual Hub (bridged to network 172.16.10.0/24) and 192.168.26.254 for the second Virtual Hub (bridged to network 192.168.26.0/24 through a cascade connection).

Static route on headquarter’s router
Destination Net Mask Gateway Metric Interface
192.168.26.0 255.255.255.0 172.16.10.254 Empty LAN

Static route on branchs’s router
Destination Net Mask Gateway Metric Interface
172.16.10.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.26.254 Empty LAN

After following all the instructions on the manual, to the letter, I can only ping, trace the route and open web pages of web servers, namely embedded web servers on network printers, access points and the router. If I trace the route to a server or desktop I get request time out after the second hop but if I trace to any device that it’s running a web server it finds it on the third hop. This happens in both directions. It's relevant to mention that i've disabled network firewalls and hosts firewalls on both networks just to see if it would make a difference but nothing changed.

I’m fighting with this for a week and a half now, any help that could point me in the right direction, would be much appreciated.

Please try to capture packets on localbridged NIC by wireshark.

Thanks a lot for your reply.

I have no experience with wireshark but i'm a fast learner. I'll get back to you with results in a day or two.

About 2 weeks, after asking for help on this forum without an answer I simply gave up on this setup because it was taking too much of time and I was getting nowhere. After your reply I finally found the time to revisit the setup and much to my surprise everything is working as it's supposed to. Since i didn't change the hardware nor the VPN configuration on both sides, my best guess is that Windows 10 was causing the issue since several windows updates were installed ever since and now everything is working just fine.

Thanks anyway.

It seems to me like a routing problem .. are default gateways on those 2 subnets?
If so, you need to add routes (and point them to VPN server/bridge) for remotes subnets on each router that serves as gateway for your subnets

Yes i already added the static routes even before i posted. But as i said yesterday everything is working flawlessly now and i didn't change none of the router's configuration. The only change in the environment was that Windows 10 installed several updates.