Gang,

I just configured openvpn on my pfsense device using an excellent youtube tutorial.  But its not working.

I think my problem is my POS Cisco DPC3825 cable modem.  Its configured to route.  There is essentially no documentation for this device, aside from a few ISP users talking about how to make it bridge only, which I haven't tried.  

I have pfsense listening on 1194 for now, and configured port forwarding on the Cisco to forward 1194 to the "wan side" IP address of my pfsense device.  Still can't connect.  There are VPN settings native to the Cisco, none of which I understand.

I think it might be time I just buy a Motorola cable modem bridge, no frills, and let pfsense do all the work.

Any suggestions?

As a followup, any recommendations for a Cox compatible cable modem bridge?  The Motorola Surfboard is the old standby I guess, but if I'm going to upgrade, I might as well go all out with the latest and greatest.

To start, I would see if the port is open and work my way back from there.  Have you tried that?  Something like http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/

Are you positive that the problem is simple connectivity from the client to the OpenVPN server? A couple months ago I set up OpenVPN on my Raspberry Pi and most of the complexity was in the server config, certificate generation, and client config files. Once I sorted everything out it has been pretty rock solid.

No ports are open on my router according to that tool.  Frankly, performing a traceroute, my router seems to be a burden, and the added complexity is not needed since I am running pfsense.  I think I would be better served with a simple bridge, and let pfsense do all of the heavy lifting.

I used this tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdAHVSTl1ys

and it seems pretty straight forward.  Got the client installed on my laptop, using my cell phone's tethering to test it.  No joy.  Figure it has to be the cablemodem/router.

I run untangle behind my pfsense install.  My Surfboard bridge should be here today, will replace the Cisco router and reconfigure openvpn and see what happens.

pfense's stats options suck, so i am using untangle to watch where my kids go.  and i have never been able to get squid amd squidguard to work right, ever.  UT is so simple to use for content filtering.  pfsense for lockdown.