Subsonic Forum

<-------------------------Subsonic Help Request---------------------->
Problem Description: Unable to access Subsonic from WAN when server is connected to VPN
Troubleshooting Steps: Turn off VPN --> able to connect to Subsonic. Connect to VPN --> timeout
Subsonic Version: 5.0 (build 4100) – September 21, 2014
Server Version: jetty-6.1.x, java 1.6.0_32, FreeBSD (80.1 MB / 106.9 MB)
Hardware Platform: NAS4FREE
<-------------------------Subsonic Help Request---------------------->

Hi, I've done a search on the forums and found some threads regarding this issue but none had any known solutions. I have Subsonic set up on my NAS4FREE machine and it is running fine. I can access it from WAN (tested using the cellular data on my phone). However, I also use OpenVPN (with Private Internet Access) on the NAS, and when I connect to it, I can no longer access Subsonic. From what I understand, this is because the VPN changes the IP address of my NAS? (or something like that). How can I connect to the VPN and use Subsonic at the same time?

Thanks!

This is a little tricky, because you will definitely have a different external IP and most likely your streaming port is blocked by the VPN company on their external interface. You can use a "open port checker" like yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/ after you find your external ip (using ipchicken.com for example) to see if you can connect to your subsonic server.
However, there are a few things you can try: use a socks proxy instead of VPN (PIA offers a socks5 proxy), so that you can still keep your ISP's extenal IP; the drawback is that not all your traffic is encrypted anymore, but if you use a p2p app they most likely have proxy support . You can also try setting up your own dyndns service with a very low TTL (because of frequent IP changes), or use public services such as afraid.org or dyndns.org, but they don't let you change the TTL as far as i know.

If you have at least 2 network cards (or 1 physical and one virtual) you can try "reserving" one for subsonic use, and use the other one for vpn traffic (very complicated, and some things might not work as you expect).

If you do manage to find a way to fix the problem please share here, i'm sure there are other users who will find this information useful.

I did a lot of searching and couldn't find a good tutorial on how to get this to work. I'm sure someone with better knowledge of FreeBSD and openVPN can probably figure it out, but that person is not me. In the meantime, I'm trying to get Subsonic running on a Raspberry Pi.