Open VPN Windows, pass all traffic through remote server

Question

Goal: To pass all information (web browsing, video games, ftp / tftp traffic, etc) through a remote network before exiting to the internet. I am able to get a default gateway on working, but I'm not able to resolve any ip-addresses. My configuration is below. The issue might be a firewall issue, but since I'm able to connect to / ping the vpn-server, any traffic exiting should be handled by the router in the same manner as the vpn server requesting that information itself, no?

Client:

client
dev tun
proto udp
remote RemostHost.net 1192
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun

ca "C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\config\\bot\\ca.crt"
cert "C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\config\\bot\\Damien-Laptop.crt"
key "C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\config\\bot\\Damien-Laptop.key"
ns-cert-type server

comp-lzo
redirect-gateway

# Set log file verbosity.
verb 3

Server:

port 1192
proto udp
dev tun
ca "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\OpenVPN\\config\\ca.crt"
cert "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\OpenVPN\\config\\Server.crt"
key "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\OpenVPN\\config\\Server.key"  # This file should be kept secret
dh "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\OpenVPN\\config\\dh1024.pem"

server 10.53.0.0 255.255.255.240
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt

keepalive 10 120

comp-lzo

;max-clients 100
;user nobody
;group nobody

persist-key
persist-tun
status openvpn-status.log


push "redirect-gateway"
route 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
push "route 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0"
keepalive 10 60

verb 3
;mute 20

Answer 1

To circumvent local DNS servers, install a DNS relay (don’t know any for Windows, sorry) on your VPN server and add the following option to your server configuration:

push "dhcp-option DNS 10.53.0.1"

Alternatively, if you trust third-party DNS servers, you could use something like Google DNS:

push "dhcp-option DNS 8.8.8.8"
push "dhcp-option DNS 8.8.4.4"

Naturally, DNS requests to Google would still be tunneled.

On the other hand, if you’re okay with local DNS, you could also add the bypass-dns flag to redirect-gateway.

Answer 2

If you are running an OpenVPN server on Windows it looks like you need to specify 'dev-node' instead of 'dev' as you have in line three of your server config.

The following is from the OpenVPN.net Client/Server example configuration.

# Windows needs the TAP-Windows adapter name
# from the Network Connections panel if you
# have more than one.  On XP SP2 or higher,
# you may need to selectively disable the
# Windows firewall for the TAP adapter.
# Non-Windows systems usually don't need this.
;dev-node MyTap

OpenVPN Howto

Also see: Re: [Openvpn-users] --dev vs --dev-node

Hope that helps!