NordVPN connection issues - possibly DNS?

English Network/Internet
1

Dear Forum,
I am running Tumbleweed on a new Slimbook Excalibur laptop (recommend, very nice!) with the installation they provided. I have been trying to get NordVPN to work, without success, and I am hoping that someone here can guide me.

TLDR -
Browsers cannot connect via VPN. They work perfectly when VPN is OFF.
Ping gives ‘wrong’ IP results when the VPN is active, as if Nord’s DNS is failing somehow. It returns 192.0.0.x addresses for sites like google and bbc - these are private, not routable afaik so must be mistaken.
NMAP shows all required ports are open - 80, 443, 1194 all return OK from external servers. Not the OpenSUSE firewall, it seems.
NordVPN seems to suppress IPV6 network responses altogether.
iPhone NordVPN client on the same account and same WiFi connection works perfectly - not the router.

Installation - no problem, using the script provided by NordVPN. nordVPN version 3.18.2-1
Command line control - no problem. Connects to a UK server, allows DNS server to be set, and uses a connection token obtained from the Nord web account page - no problem.
Uses the Nordlinx protocol.
the NordLynx virtual adapter appears in networkmanager. (does give a limited connection warning after a short time)

I tested ping, nmap etc to see if I could work out what was happening - I can’t post my full results as the forum doesn’t allow me to post with lots of links in the text.

Any insights gratefully received.
Miles

2

NordVPN doesn’t support IPv6 yet. Didi you manually set DNS on nordVPN setting? If so disable it since it don’t use private DNS from Nord servers.

I installed yesterday on fresh tumbleweed Nord and no issues usually I don’t touch bottom 3 setting on Nord settings since they have issues

3

Thanks! I am waiting for detailed answers from Nord about the DNS question. If I follow your suggestion, not to use Nord’s private DNS, which DNS server do you recommend?

I could not include all of my test results - but one interesting one was that I had the best DNS results from Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 server. Google 8.8.8.8 did not work as well. I can’t see any reason for different results from alternative servers, if they are working correctly.

If I get some good information from Nord, I will write up a summary here in due course.

They did ask me for the nordvpn logs - generated from running
sudo journalctl -u nordvpnd > ~/Desktop/daemonlog.txt

THis gave me a huge text file, with a lot of extremely complex content. I hope that this will give the Nord technical support line what they need.

cheers
Miles

4

No you get best results by using nordVPN private DNS it is automatic enabled and if you enable/set DNS from Nordvpn settings is overwritten the privateDNS and uses your custom DNS server

5

my settings

phatle@tumbleweed:~> nordvpn settings
Technology: NORDLYNX
Firewall: enabled
Firewall Mark: 0xe1f1
Routing: enabled
Analytics: enabled
Kill Switch: enabled
Threat Protection Lite: enabled
Notify: enabled
Tray: enabled
Auto-connect: enabled
IPv6: enabled
Meshnet: disabled
DNS: disabled
LAN Discovery: disabled
6

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