How to use OpenVPN client on Windows?  

I have an OpenVPN server running on my router and am trying to set up OpenVPN on a laptop so I can access computers and NAS drives on my LAN when traveling. I had very little trouble getting software installed and configured enough to get a VPN tunnel to my router. But I've had next to no luck figuring out how to actually use it.

When in it's "remote" configuration, my laptop is using a tethered mobile phone as a "modem". It appears as an Ethernet NDIS interface. OpenVPN provides and uses a TAP/TUN driver (tap-windows6 driver 9.24.2). And BTW, I really don't understand anything I said in that sentence. The important thing, I think, is that I've got 2 active network adapters - both virtual. One is supporting my internet connection and provides the IP default gateway 192.168.0.1. The other is the VPN tunnel endpoint and, in my configuration, uses IP subnet 10.8.0.0. The router at the other end of the tunnel uses subnet 192.168.1.0. The router itself is 192.168.1.1.

Fine so far. I can ping devices on my LAN (that don't have firewalls blocking pings). I can reach the HTTP servers on the NAS devices via their IP addresses.

I cannot access anything on the LAN by name; no DSN queries get forwarded to the router. Unfortunately, I access everything on my LAN by name. I don't know if this is a problem with the way I have OpenVPN configured, or is due to Windows' not knowing how to handle the 2 network interfaces.

I also cannot bring up Remote Desktop connections with the computers on the LAN. I've seen many web articles indicating RDP across VPN is possible so I know I'm not trying the impossible. Some articles mention firewalls getting in the way, but since my VPN tunnel is to my router rather than the remote Windows I don't think that is the problem ... at the server end. But I have no idea what the TAP/TUN adapter looks like on the client side. I don't see options for Public/Private settings, etc.

Anyone have any experience setting up a configuration like this?

I don't know if it matters, but I'm running Win10 1903.

One of the problems is when windows looks for a pc it scans the local network subnet mask ot asks the master browser if your on a different ip range or subnet it wont find anything. You should be able to connect via IP see if that work for a start for this you need to assign static IPs to network pcs. If that work ok you can add the names and IP to the host file so you can use the name. DNS isnt used on local networks.

You can test this from within the network it must be from an exteranl network.

I would update to 1909 before you mess about to much MS often changes things so you can get it working on for an update to mess it up if you have the latest updates you know there wont be any major updates to mess it up

Samuria said:

...You should be able to connect via IP see if that work for a start for this you need to assign static IPs to network pcs.

I should have mentioned that I already tried that. I had to since name resolution isn't working. I don't have static IP addresses, but I used the one currently in use. (And my router is good at giving out the same address even after it's lifetime has expired.)

I'll keep digging.

Most routers you can tell it to allways give each pc the same ip

Name resolution started working when I added a domain name in my router - applied locally to all devices on my LAN. I have no idea if this was required or something else I did (without knowing it) fixed things.

I still couldn't get remote desktop working ... until I remembered I had set up firewals on my computers to block any remote desktop connection that was not from a computer on the LAN. I added the VPN tunnel's subnet to allowable remote addresses and suddenly all worked. Duh!