poor bittorrent performance with NordVPN

Troubleshooting
1

Hi all,

I have 2 devices with dietpi.

One is an Odroid HC2 with a static IP of 192.168.50.254. I’ll refer to this as 254.

The other is a Raspberry Pi 4 8GiB with a static IP of 192.168.50.253. I’ll refer to this as 253.

254 has a 2TiB disk where I keep my shared files and torrents.

Since 253 has a lot more memory, I have Plex in it and its libraries are on a shared network folder of 254.

My network is the ISP box (192.168.0.1) that has a MAC reservation for my router (192.168.0.100). In the ISP box I have the ports 64875 and 51413 forwarded to my router.

I have my router set as 192.168.50.1 and I enabled a DHCP server from 192.168.50.2 to 192.168.50.254. I have also defined port 64875 forwarded to 254 and port 51413 forwarded to 253.

In both 254 and 253, I have Transmission installed and defined incoming ports as 64875 and 51413, respectively.

In 253, I click the button to test port and it reports port open.

In 253, I click the button to test port and it reports “Incoming port is closed. Check your firewall settings”.

The forwarding setup for both ports was done the same way on the ISP box and in the router, only changing the client name accordingly.

To my knowledge there is no firewalls installed anywhere.

root@DietPi:~# ip addr ## for 253
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether dc:a6:32:c2:2f:f1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.50.253/24 brd 192.168.50.255 scope global eth0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever




root@DietPi:~# ip addr ## for 254
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:1e:06:31:fb:8c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.50.254/24 brd 192.168.50.255 scope global eth0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

On 254 I had the DietPi-NordVPN installed (I have a subscription with them) and there was a tun0 entry on ip addr.

I uninstalled it and the port forwarding is working now.

I rebooted 254, port 64875 open!

I reinstalled dietpi-nordvpn on 254 and rebooted. Port 64875 open.

Dietpi-software says Dietpi-NordVPN is installed, but there is no “dietpi-nordvpn” to run and configure it.

What am I doing wrong here?

2

hi,

well using a VPN make your port forwarding on your router obsolet. Because entire communication is running via the VPN tunnel bypassing your router port forwarding settings :wink:

NordVPN is available via dietpi-launcher or directly via /boot/dietpi/misc/dietpi-nordvpn

3

Hi Joulinar,

Thanks! It makes sense now! :slight_smile:

How do I tell transmission to use the VPN tunnel?

4

I need to say I’m not an expert in transmission but usually it will use the VPN interface automatically if available.

5

The default vpn settings are to override the default gateway when the vpn tunnel is up. Compare the output of the command

ip -4 ro

before and after the vpn interface is connected to verify.

6

With the VPN disconnected:

root@DietPi:~# ip -4 ro
default via 192.168.50.1 dev eth0 onlink 
192.168.50.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.50.254

With the VPN connected:

root@DietPi:~# ip -4 ro
0.0.0.0/1 via 10.8.0.1 dev tun0 
default via 192.168.50.1 dev eth0 onlink 
10.8.0.0/24 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.8.0.2 
128.0.0.0/1 via 10.8.0.1 dev tun0 
192.168.50.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.50.254 
217.138.222.187 via 192.168.50.1 dev eth0

So, it seems NordVPN’s tunnel is up. Right?

7

That is correct.