So, when on travel, I notice the EXPLOINSIGHTS, Inc. OpenVPN server becomes a little unreliable (slow). It was configured originally using UDP as the transfer protocol. UDP is the faster of the modern two protocol options (UDP and TCP). It’s fast because it throws data down the pipe and assumes it makes it to the right destination. This is brilliant…when it works. And when it doesn’t you want to use the slightly slower but much more robust TCP protocol, which actually checks to make sure the packets it sends make it to the right place!
So it’s a simple change: on Ubuntu, just edit your openvpn config at /etc/openvpn/server.conf, and change ‘proto udp’ to ‘proto tcp’. Save config, restart your openvpn server (sudo service openvpn restart – or your server equivalent, or reboot server if more convenient for you). If you run a different server distro, then just google your distro and openvpn. It will give you links to show you where your config file is, but it could well be the same as above (so look there first!).
Now you need to make the same change for each of your client config files. So whatever devices are using the VPN server, find their local config files (in windows it’s user/yourname/openvpn/config/file-name.ovpn) and make the same change as above. No need to restart anything, just load the config into your client and run. Hey presto, your server is running with TCP. Enjoy a more reliable/consistent, and marginally slower vpn service.
🙂
The EXPLOINSIGHTS, Inc. System Administrator's journey to establish and operate a Centralised Office IT Infrastructure