Cannot connect to Home Assistent when I'm not at home (using a VPN with my router)

Configuration
1

Hi, I have a VPN tunnel between my mobile and my router at home. When I am at home, I can connect to Home Assistant using the mobile network and this tunnel. However, when I am not at home, this suddenly does not work anymore. Ping to the server nevertheless works.

Is there any security feature in HA that requires users to be in their home zone when connecting to home assistant? Any other idea what the problem is?

2

No there isn’t.

Are you 100% sure you are using the mobile network and not local wifi?

3

agree with tom, double check.
for more context, what vpn tunnel and what device is providing the service (router or some other device?)
network routing can be quite surprising :slight_smile:

4

Ok, I have the same issue here. When I VPN tunnel into my network away from home I can’t access Homeassistant.Duckdns. however, when I tunnel through a friend’s VPN that I set up it works just fine. I believe this worked before but since a few updates, I’ve not been able to.

5

There are few scenarios when using a VPN causes your Companion App to not able to connect to your HA instant. Here is an example:-

  1. You have Home Network WiFi SSID set up in your Companion App
  2. You have Internal Connection URL set up in your Companion App
  3. Your device is connected to the WiFi that you listed in 1.
  4. Your device is connected to a VPN

When all of the above is true, the Companion App will use Internal Connection URL to connect to HA.
Which means your device will try to connect to the Internal Connection URL via your VPN.

If your Internal Connection URL is not visible from your VPN, then you won’t be able to connect to HA.

This happened to me and I’m still thinking what’s the best approach to solve this in a robust manner.