TCPMSS parameters in firewall are required proper routing of tcp connections of 
client within the ipsec tunnel but:
 iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type fragmentation-needed -j ACCEPT 

Rule can help to udp connections when mtu changes. The Same thing happened on 
me when connection from clients ISP being throttled and dropped silently. Use:

dpddelay=300s ‎
‎dpdaction=clear

On server side (this will check dead peers and remove them in every 300 seconds 
in your case if client disappears maximum after 300s he/she can connect, you 
might decrease 300s to find optimal time)

And use:

dpddelay=5s
dpdaction=restart

On client side (if connection dropped client will check in each 5s and restart 
connection automatically if it drops)
In this case server will drop connections if they completely disconnected 
within the 300s maximum and client will restart the connection in 5s if 
temporary failure occured due to packet loss.

Also adding mobike=yes into ipsec.conf connections and changing reuse_ikesa to 
yes in strongswan.d/charon.conf will help connection remain active even if ip 
changes or temporary disruptions (if client uses mobile 3G connection with high 
latency and low bandwith).

Anvar Kuchkartaev 
[email protected] 
  Original Message  
From: Stephen Scheck
Sent: martes, 3 de octubre de 2017 09:18 p.m.
To: Anvar Kuchkartaev
Cc: Jamie Stuart; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [strongSwan] Timeout on poor connection


Thanks for the configs.

I added the dpd* parameters to my configurations. My situation is a little 
different in that my traffic is primarily UDP, so the TCP MSS settings are not 
needed. I also need to use IKEv1. Furthermore, I’m running a scale test in 
which there’s low latency and plenty of bandwidth, which may nonetheless be 
saturated by the number of simultaneous connections which are being attempted.

Unfortunately, the dpd* parameters did not help. I still notice a small number 
(25-50) connections out of several thousand which fail to establish, and stay 
that way until the StrongSwans are restarted.

Does anybody know of any further parameters which may influence connection 
attempts and retries?

One thing that I’ve noted is that if I run both the client and server 
StrongSwan processes on single core machines, or with the StrongSwan threads 
pinned to a single CPU, the success rate is *decidedly better* than with 
multiple cores available (although, occasionally, even then a couple of them 
fail to establish and stay “stuck”).

I’m beginning to think there may be some troublesome concurrency bugs in the 
StrongSwan IKEv1 routines.

Any help appreciated!



> On Sep 30, 2017, at 7:14 PM, Anvar Kuchkartaev <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> ipsec.conf
> 
> keyexchange=ikev2
> type=tunnel
> dpdaction=clear
> dpddelay=300s
> rekey=yes
> left=%any
> right=%any
> fragmentation=yes
> compress=yes
> 
> parameters from server side and:
> 
> dpdtimeout=20s
> dpddelay=5s
> dpdaction=restart
> 
> from client side I think most important.
> 
> Also you have to do several server optimizations like:
> 
> 
> firewall:
> 
> iptables -A INPUT -p esp -j ACCEPT
> 
> iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m multiport --dport 500,4500 -j ACCEPT
> 
> iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type fragmentation-needed -j ACCEPT
> 
> iptables -I FORWARD -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -j TCPMSS 
> --clamp-mss-to-pmtu
> 
> sysctl.conf
> 
> net.ipv4.ip_forward_use_pmtu=1 (I assume you have done rest of the sysctl 
> configurations like ip_forward, etc.)
> 
> 
> 
> On 30/09/17 19:37, Jamie Stuart wrote:
>> Could you post your (redacted) strongswan config Anvar?
>> 
>>> On 30 Sep 2017, at 00:59, Anvar Kuchkartaev <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I also have some clients connecting from central Asia where internet is 
>>> very poor and restricted. The main optimizations must be done at the server 
>>> os and firewall not in strongswan. In strongswan try to authenticate server 
>>> with 2048 bit certificate or higher and watch out IKE ciphers, 
>>> dos_protection, ikesa_table_size, ikesa_table_segments, 
>>> ikesa_hashtable_size parameters. Allow only IKEv2 if possible and decrease 
>>> dpd requests and set dpdaction=restart to restart connection automatically 
>>> if tunnel fails. From operating system watch out mtu changes because in my 
>>> case I had a lot of mtu decreases within the provider network in the region 
>>> client located. Allow icmp fragmentation needed requests from firewall and 
>>> make tcpmss optimizations. It is also recommended to install proxy server 
>>> behind VPN server which only possible to connect within the VPN tunnel (so 
>>> client could configure it's browser to proxy server to enhance connection 
>>> stability).
>>> 
>>> Anvar Kuchkartaev
>>> [email protected]
>>> Original Message
>>> From: Jamie Stuart
>>> Sent: viernes, 29 de septiembre de 2017 05:59 p.m.
>>> To: [email protected]
>>> Subject: [strongSwan] Timeout on poor connection
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> We have client (running on LEDE) connecting to a server (Ubuntu). The 
>>> client is connecting from rural Africa of 2G/3G with high latency and low 
>>> speed.
>>> Often, the connection does not come up, timing out after 5 retracts like 
>>> the log below:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ipsec up {connection}
>>> initiating IKE_SA {connection}[2] to {serverip}
>>> generating IKE_SA_INIT request 0 [ SA KE No N(NATD_S_IP) N(NATD_S_IP) 
>>> N(FRAG_SUP) N(HASH_ALG) N(REDIR_SUP)]
>>> sending packet: from {clientip}[500] to {serverip}[500] (378 bytes)
>>> retransmit 1 of request with message ID 0
>>> sending packet: from {clientip}[500] to {serverip}[500] (378 bytes)
>>> retransmit 2 of request with message ID 0
>>> sending packet: from {clientip}[500] to {serverip}[500] (378 bytes)
>>> retransmit 3 of request with message ID 0
>>> sending packet: from {clientip}[500] to {serverip}[500] (378 bytes)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Is there anything more we can do to make the connection 1) establish more 
>>> reliably 2) remain ’up’ even over a power quality connection (using MOBIKE 
>>> already)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thanks in advance!
>>> 
>>> Jamie, onebillion
>>> 
> 
> 
> 



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