Using a VPN on a Droplet Makes it Unreachable.

Posted on October 30, 2021

Hello,

I’d like to apologize beforehand for the lack of (maybe common) knowledge on my part but I am pretty new to networking and VMs and at this point I’m not sure what to google even.

Problem: I have installed NordVPN on my droplet (I use it to change the Droplet IP with a certain frequency). Obviously, when I do that the Public IP of the Droplet is now different so, of course I will not be able to SSH to it using the Public IP shown in my DO profile.

To fix that, I’ve created a second Droplet in the same Region so I can use the VPC and connect using the Private IP of the Droplet. However, the same problem is still present - the moment I turn on NordVPN the Droplet becomes unreachable, even though I am trying to connect on the Private IP address and not the Public one.

What am I missing here? My assumption was that the VPN affects only the Public IP, however it sees that is not the case. Does it even makes sense what I’m trying to achieve or is it fundamentally impossible?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Kind Regards

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gyganchev

October 30, 2021

I’ve found the answer, and I’d like to share it for anyone having similar issues in the future.

It turns out I had to “whitelist” the VPC I have my 2 Droplets on, otherwise the VPN routes all traffic, regardless of whether it is “Public” or “Private”.

So in my case I had to find out the VPC address and add it to the whitelist:

nordvpn whitelist add subnet <subnet>/<port>