Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2024 11:18 Post subject: Problems accessing PPTP VPN from Windows 11 client
I am trying to set up a PPTP VPN server on my Netgear R7800, as a backup to an existing OpenVPN server which I have running on a VM in my home LAN. The reason is that, on occasion, the machine running the OpenVPN server has crashed while I have been away from home and I have been unable to connect to rectify things.
I have my PPTP settings as follows:
I have set up a VPN client connection on a Windows 11 laptop as follows:
When I try to connect I get this message:
Code:
Connecting to mydomain.ddns.net
After about 20 seconds I get this error:
[code]The network connection between your computer and the VPN server was interrupted. This can be caused by a problem in the VPN transmission and is commonly the result of internet latency or simply that the VPN server has reached capacity. Please try to reconnect to the VPN server. If this problem persists, contact the VPN administrator and analyze the quality of network connectivity[/code
I am connecting over a 4G network which seems to be performing reasonably well for web browsing, etc.
Any idea why I'm unable to connect - is 4G simply not up to it?
Incidentally, if I connect my laptop to the home wifi I get exactly the same error when I try to connect to the VPN.
???
PPTP is highly insecure and not much used these days so the expertise is waning.
I hope you get an answer but otherwise consider using WireGuard or OpenVPN.
Guides are a sticky in this forum
Thanks - yes that's understood. This is intended strictly as a backup option when my main OpenVPN server is unavailable for any reason. As the OpenVPN ports on the router are currently forwarded to that server I wanted to keep things simple by using a different VPN protocol for the backup server.
Since you have IPv6 enabled, I'd try disabling it (on the connection). I don't think the router supports PPTP over IPv6. TBH, it's been ages since I've used the PPTP server (and it's a rare usage by users too), so I'm just guessing.
Since you have IPv6 enabled, I'd try disabling it (on the connection). I don't think the router supports PPTP over IPv6. TBH, it's been ages since I've used the PPTP server (and it's a rare usage by users too), so I'm just guessing.
P.S. As a backup, perhaps SSH w/ local port forwarding might be a better option, at least compared to PPTP. In my own case, I don't enable the SSH server on the WAN, but instead access it via the LAN side using Cloudflare tunnels.
Thanks. I just tried disabling IPv6 on the connection but I got the same error :0(
One of the real annoyances w/ PPTP is that it's incredibly stingy when it comes to error messages, esp. on the client side (unlike OpenVPN, which is chatty in the extreme, on both sides of the connection). But there should be at least something in the PPTP server-side syslog that indicates the problem. Quite often it has to do w/ a mismatch between the negotiated options.
Might be an issue on the client side router too. It has to support GRE and PPTP passthrough. Given that PPTP is considered insecure, it might be disabled by default, or perhaps not even supported anymore.
I'm looking into Wireguard as a parallel exercise, but haven't had any luck with that so far, either....I'll open another thread for my Wireguard issues...
Joined: 18 Mar 2014 Posts: 13650 Location: Netherlands
Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2024 16:25 Post subject:
itm1960 wrote:
I'm looking into Wireguard as a parallel exercise, but haven't had any luck with that so far, either....I'll open another thread for my Wireguard issues...
This forum admin identified that PPTP is insecure!
They did not update ppp protocol many many year! Version 2.4.8! Then, they always encourage the users using openvpn or wireguard etc.
The stable version is 2.4.7.
The unstable version is 2.4.8.
The last update version is 2.5.2.
