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I am trying to connect to my home computer thru my home router vpn from my iPhone on LTE.

My home Netgear router has its OpenVPN connection enabled. I can VPN into my home network and see my home computer with no problem IF the home computer is not on its own VPN going out.

When the home computer is on its own VPN going out I am unable to connect to it from my iPhone (WAN).

When the home computer is connected to its own VPN it has both 10.xx.xx.xx & 192.168.1.4 interfaces.

When I'm on my LAN and the home computer is connected to a VPN I can still connect to it from my iPhone if I use the direct IP of 192.168.1.4.

It seems when I'm on the LAN I can access the home computer (while on VPN) but when I try to access it from my iPhone on LTE it can't make the connection.

Sorry for the convoluted description.

Any ideas? Is it even possible?

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    "When the home computer is connected to it's own VPN it has both 10.xx.xx.xx & 192.168.1.4 interfaces." - This shouldn't be possible. Before I say this is out of scope, I assume you have connected the iPhone, to your VPN, while connected to LTE instead of your home network that would require making the VPN publically accessiable which is a bad idea.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 0:02
  • Correct. The iphone is on LTE. It is connected to my Home router VPN (netgear nighthawk server). If the home computer 192.168.1.4 is not on it's own VPN I can connect to it. If I have it running it's own VPN out I cannot connect to it. Here is more info: If the Iphone is on my LAN (no vpn) and the Home computer is on it's VPN the iphone can see it as well as my other devices, NAS, PLex, etc.
    – fat fantasma
    Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 19:18

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I assume the PC is trying to route all the traffic through the VPN. There could be several reasons why this blocks the connection, and there is no way to tell without further information. If this is the case the solution depends on your VPN client (the one on the home computer) and your usage of the VPN.

If the VPN client on your home computer has something called "split-tunnel" enable it, this will lead to all the regular internet traffic not being routed through the VPN.

If this is not possible you have to add the routes for the VPN manually. This will tell your home PC when to use the VPN (for everything else, including the remote connection, it then will not use the VPN).

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  • When I VPN into my home router from my iphone, it's gets an IP of 192.168.256.2. My LAN is 192.168.1.x. The netgear router must add a route to cross over. The iphone VPN connection works if the Home computer does not have the VPN on. I'm guessing when the Home computer has the VPN on, the netgear router VPN adds the the VPN route and not the local LAN route of 192.168.1.4. I see no way to configure the routes in the Netgear Nighthawk router.
    – fat fantasma
    Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 19:27
  • On a side note, a couple of years ago I had the home computer's VPN company open up a port and forwarded to my home computer vpn client. It worked but all traffic went thru the VPN which was slow and I also did not like to have a port open at the VPN company. This is why I wanted it to work with my own VPN server.
    – fat fantasma
    Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 19:28
  • These routes are set up on the device with the VPN client, not the VPN server. However, check if the server/client has a split tunnel function that will make things much easier (integrated clients which use IPsec don't have a split tunnel function).
    – Albin
    Commented Jun 21, 2022 at 15:43

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