This tutorial explains how to connect your Padavan firmware router to NordVPN using the OpenVPN protocol.
First things first, these changes are made in the web configuration panel of your router. You can access it by visiting the local IP of your router from your web browser. The two most common, default local IPs that most routers have are 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 - you can access these by opening http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1 in your browser. The default IP, username and password are listed in your router’s User Manual.
1. Please access your router and navigate to VPN Client -> Settings tab.
2. Select Enable VPN Client and fill in the fields as follows:
Remote VPN Server (IP or DNS host): for the sake of the tutorial, we have used se22.nordvpn.com, but personally, you should connect automatically to the suggested server.
Follow the steps below to find the best server for your connection:
-
Log in to your Nord Account and click NordVPN.
- Scroll down to Advanced Settings and click Set up NordVPN manually.
- Select the Server recommendation tab. The best server will be recommended for you according to your location.
-
By pressing Advanced filters, you can customize the recommended servers by selecting the Server type and the Security protocol.
In case you wish to select a specific server, follow these steps:
- Under Set up NordVPN manually, select OpenVPN configuration files.
- You can find the server you wish to connect to using the Search bar or by scrolling down. Then, you can download it by clicking Download UDP or Download TCP.
- When connecting to OpenVPN & IKEv2 manually, you'll need to use the Username and Password from the Service credential tab.
Login: Your NordVPN service username
Password: Your NordVPN service password
Authentication Algorithm: SHA-512
Encryption Cipher Algorithm: AES-256-CBC
Enable LZO for Data Compression: Disable
You can find your NordVPN service credentials (service username and service password) in the Nord Account dashboard.
Follow the steps below to find the service credentials for manual connection setup:
-
Log into your Nord Account, click NordVPN, and, under Manual setup, click on Service credentials. Here you'll find the Username and Password needed to connect manually.
Open the OpenVPN Extended Configuration menu and paste the following code block:
remote-cert-tls server
remote-random
nobind
tun-mtu 1500
tun-mtu-extra 32
mssfix 1450
persist-key
persist-tun
ping-timer-rem
reneg-sec 0
# log /tmp/vpn.log
### Syslog verbose level
verb 3
mute 10
If you wish to use TCP protocol instead, change the Transport option to TCP, and Port to 443.
3. Press Apply and then select OpenVPN Certificates & Keys
Copy our servers CA certificate into ca.crt field and Static Key into ta.key field. You can download these certificates and keys using this link: https://downloads.nordcdn.com/configs/archives/certificates/servers.zip
4. After connecting to our service you should make your changes permanent. You can do it in three ways:
• Run in console command "mtd_storage.sh save";
• On the page Advanced Settings -> Administration -> Settings press button "Commit" to the right of the item "Commit Internal Storage to Flash Memory Now";
• Reboot router by pressing the Reboot button to the right of "Logout" button.
5. You should also use NordVPN DNS servers to protect against DNS leaks. You can see the setting in the image below:
