Posts Tagged ‘DD-WRT’

Astrill 2.7 Released

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

What’s new in Astrill 2.7?

- New: Router Setup Wizard which now supports DD-WRT and Tomato based routers and new router applet v2.1
- New: router applet 2.1 coded from scratch for both Tomato and DD-WRT ! New premium features offered only by Astrill – Device Filter (select which devices will go over VPN), Site Filter (which sites will go over VPN) and Port Forwarding.
- New: Network redirection component for Macintosh and Linux. Improved LSP (Network component) for Windows. Astrill now works with all flash based streaming web sites in all top browsers and Application Filter for OpenVPN mode is now supported on all three platforms as well – Windows, Macintosh, Linux
- New: Site Catcher tool – allows you to build your custom Site Filters for OpenVPN mode very easily. Do you want to stream just certain sites through VPN? Now it’s so easy to do that!
- New: Native 64 bit version for Linux including appropriate Debian (.deb) and RedHat (.rpm) packages. Astrill now works on more Linux platforms than ever.
- New: ‘Stealth OpenVPN’ mode – a premium feature offered by Astrill only. Stealth mode will work behind very restrictive/censoring firewalls and it’s practically impossible to block it! Even better – your ISP will have no clue you are using a VPN – Stealth protocol we use will not be recognized as any standard VPN protocol !
- New: Improved OpenVPN network driver for Windows – improves speed and avoids conflicts with 3rd party OpenVPN applications.
- New: automatic port forwarding using UPnP and NAT-PMP protocols. Most P2P applications (including Bittorrent) can now forward ports automatically without user intervention !
- New: Speed Test tool – test the speed of all servers easily ! This tool will help you to find out the fastest server for your current location/ISP.
- Updated: OpenVPN is updated to version 2.2.2 for greater security and performance enhancements.
- Improved: Application and Site Filters for OpenVPN mode for greater flexibility and easier use.
- Improved: Site Filter in OpenWeb mode to be easier for use. ‘Smart Mode’ is available in Site Filter window. You can now add custom sites to Smart Mode filter as well !
- Improved: user interface – as we are adding new servers frequently, servers list is getting bigger and bigger. We now sort the list by placing TOP 7 most used servers on the top for easier access. It’s possible to sort servers alphabetically as well. On Windows – you can search for a server by typing a few letters.
- Improved: user interface – now you can switch between OpenWeb and OpenVPN protocols after you login using a button in the title bar !
- Fixed: Media Recorder to work with recent changes on Youtube. It’s possible to plug 3rd party flash recorders with Astrill – for example RTMPSuck – and record videos from Hulu and similar sites (this is for “hackers” only :) ).
- Fixed: tray icon on Ubuntu with Unity (you will need to logout and login again for the icon to appear).
- Fixed: Mac OS crash caused by a bug in OpenVPN TUN/TAP driver.
- Fixed: an issue with threads limit on Windows and Macintosh which caused “Unable to create a new thread – Error 8″ – or “Unable to create new semaphore – too many threads” which were occurring when you open a lot of tabs in a web browser.
- Hundreds of other enhancements

In short, version 2.7 brings you a powerful Router applet, makes it possible to watch ANY flash based site on ALL platforms (Windows/Linux/Mac) in all top browsers when using OpenWeb mode, while OpenVPN mode brings very flexible Application and Site (IP) filters. Astrill now features Stealth OpenVPN which makes Astrill the only VPN working in countries with high censorship (Syria, UAE, Iran, etc.) and practically unblockable by firewalls.

We have released a new version of Astrill Dialer application for Windows as well. The new version supports PPTP, L2TP/IPSec and SSTP protocols. SSTP is suitable for users from countries with high censorship or in case your ISP blocks conventional VPN protocols. The application is available on our download page.

When installing new version, over old version, don’t forget to reboot your computer !

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Posted in News, Public Releases, Releases | 2 Comments »

What Router for OpenVPN ?

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Customers ask us every day what router do we recommend for use with Astrill OpenVPN DD-WRT application. So let’s summarize the most important things you should look at when choosing your WiFi router.

The first thing you need to ensure is compatibility with DD-WRT. The most important factors are chipset type (Broadcom, Atheros, Ralink, …) and flash size (2 MB, 4 MB, 8 MB, etc…). The list of supported devices by DD-WRT can be found here:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices

Please make sure your device is listed there. You won’t be able to use Astrill on your router if your router doesn’t support DD-WRT.

To be able to install OpenVPN compatible DD-WRT firmware, your router needs at least 4 MB of flash size. Do not mix flash memory with RAM memory. Flash memory holds your firmware, thus it needs to be large enough. All Broadcom based routers with 4mb or more are compatible with OpenVPN. However, if you got just 4 MB, you can’t install DD-WRT with all features, you will need to use small version of DD-WRT with OpenVPN support.

We recommend a Broadcom based router with 8 MB or more of flash. This router will let you install full version (mega) of DD-WRT, thus you can use all available features.

The router we have used in our lab is Asus RT-N16. This is a Broadcom based router with clock speed of 533 MHz, 32 MB of flash and 128 MB of RAM. This is a beast among routers. You can check out its hardware specs here:

http://infodepot.wikia.com/wiki/Asus_RT-N16

Besides flash size, important characteristics of your router is CPU speed. OpenVPN is hardware intensive application (due to encryption and compression), thus the faster CPU you get, the faster speeds you can expect. In a typical scenario, your router will run OpenVPN and have a few wireless clients connected. So in order to handle it all perfectly, you need to have faster CPU.

If you have a router already, you can find a compatible firmware here:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

Just type a few letters like “Linksys WRT 160N” and it will list you available firmwares. If your only option is micro then you won’t be able to use this router with OpenVPN. DD-WRT with OpenVPN support needs at least router with 4 MB of flash.

If you have any questions or need a help to choose your DD-WRT compatible router, don’t hesitate to contact our support.

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Posted in Tutorials | 6 Comments »

Astrill OpenVPN on DD-WRT Web Install

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Due to a lack of documentation, many features in Astrill are a secret, even for our support team. Only developers know all the secrets. We are planning to change this soon with a nice FAQ and manual.

It is possible to install Astrill OpenVPN applet on DD-WRT compatible routers without using Astrill application. Please note that requirements are the same, minimal build is 13309 (v24 or newer; Mega, Big, VPN, OpenVPN builds).

To install Astrill OpenVPN applet on your router, first navigate to the router web control panel using your browser, e.g. it could be located on http://192.168.1.1. Click on tab Administration->Commands. If you are prompted for a password, the default is root/admin (unless you have changed it). You will see a screen similar to this one:

In the Ccommands box type:

eval `wget -q -O - http://www.astrill.com/ddwrt/install/YOUR_EMAIL/YOUR_PASSWORD`

Please replace YOUR_EMAIL and YOUR_PASSWORD with appropriate values and make sure you don’t remove backtick (`). It’s not an apostrophe (‘).

Then hit “Run Commands” and wait a few moments. If everything went correctly, you will see the following screen:

If you have any error on this step, please double check your firmware version, make sure it has OpenVPN 2.0+ The best is to contact our support and we can schedule a remote desktop session.

Astrill is now installed on tab Status->My Page, so let’s go there. You will see the following screen:

Choose a server from the drop down box and hit Connect. We will be soon adding more servers to Astrill DD-WRT.

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Posted in Tutorials | 3 Comments »