VPN and tailscale blocked on hotel wifi

Best bet is probably going to be using something like OpenVPN on port 443 in TCP mode, which basically looks like regular HTTPS. It's a hotel, I doubt they're going to be doing deep analysis to detect signs it's OpenVPN. It's detectable easily but they wouldn't spend the money on that advanced of a firewall.

My guess is they went for an allowed list of ports rather than blocked, so it lets DNS (53), HTTP (80), HTTPS (443), probably also POP/IMAP/SMTP (110, 995, 143, 993, 465)

I mean, while they can block most things, to give people a usable experience they're going to allow http and https traffic through, and they can't really proxy https because of the TLS layer.

So for universal chance of success, running openvpn tcp over port 443 is the most likely to get past this level of bad. I guess they could block suspicious traffic in the session before TLS is established (in order to block certain domains). OpenVPN does support traversing a proxy, but it might only work if you specify it. If their network sets a proxy via DHCP, maybe you could see that and work around it.

I did have fun working around an ex gf's university network many years ago to get a VPN running over it. They were very, very serious about blocking non-standard services. A similar "through" the proxy method was the last resort they didn't seem to bother trying to stop.

Try mullvad use different ports, use their circumvention approaches.

Use your cell phone mobile data

Talk to the hotel, tell them you cannot connect to your corporate vpn, ask if they have a workaround

I had the same situation, my hotel used fortinet and they blocked almost everything

Even VPNs that used to work in China were blocked

I used my phone 4g hotspot to initialize the tailscale connection, which was blocked, I chose my server as an exit point, then I switched back to the WiFi. Amazingly, once logged in to tailscale, it kept connected to my server.

Then for added safety I used my kasm install to stream a Firefox browser running on my server

I don't really understand this, why would a hotel pay thousands and thousands of euro for a "Chinese internet experience" that is going to piss off every single customer

Contact support and tell them you need VPN access on the WiFi you are paying for.

I found my works wifi blocks most ports outbound, but switching my my vpn to a more 'standard' port like 80, 443, 22, etc gets through just fine.

Now I've got a couple port forwarding rules I can switch on, as needed, that take one of those and route it to my vpn host.

I've had this issue many times as well. I've found changing the MTU would help since it seems some filter specific ranges. Doesn't always work but I've had more success than failure doing so

Have you passed their captive portal before turning on the VPN?

This advice is what it is, but I work in a school and Tailscale also seems to be (unintentionally) blocked. After a while I realized it was only the login server that was blocked. If I login using my phone data I can go back to the regular network and it works.

This was years ago, but I had a similar issue of not being able to SSH in a hotel. I talked to the front desk and they were able to grant me access to a different network that didn't have that blocked. I can't remember whether I had to pay for it or not...

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

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That is why i have everything that needs to be accessible, is reasonably secure and is not critical like management interfaces exposed.

You could try to http proxy your connection. As soon as the connection is then encrypted with https no firewall can block it.

The firewall probably blocks everything except port 80 and 443 and every protocol except tcp and udp.

It's a headache most of the time so you might consider purchasing a local SIM card for 4/5G connection instead (and share connection via mobile phone) in the future.

You could try using a relay somewhere in your process; while I was on a travel gig I had to do some finicky work with a travel router (though this may not work, since you need a VPN for your work, but maybe it'll give you an idea: https://ideatrash.net/2022/05/howto-secure-and-share-your-internet-on-free-wireless-wifi.html

Also if you have your DNS resolvers manually put in, you may not encounter their portal. Had that problem when on hotel wifi as well.

All that said, I ended up using phone data a lot.

Several weeks... might just be worth it to take a walk and find another hotel. Then cancel the rest of your nights at hotel#1 and cite their internet blocking policy of VPNs for the reason for cancelling the remainder of your stay, as it prevents you and many other professionals from working.

Usually it can be solved by talking to hotel stuff. you are paying for that service and can expect it be suitable for any legal use.

I'm surprised that Tailscale can't get through, cleaver routing is one of Tailsacle's features. Though I do sometimes have connection issues with Tailscale when running DNS-over-HTTPS on my laptop.

If all you want is ssh the easiest and cheapest way might be to hire a VPS, connect to it and connect to tailscale there. Just ensure you have very strict rules on ssh and you should be safe enough.

Exposing web services in this manner is also easy using Caddy, but be careful since the services would then be publicly available.

When you use someone else's internet, there's nothing you can really do. Maybe rent a VPS and set it up as relay.

Most hotels are terrible and even block any DNS configurations that aren't controlled by them. If you do figure out a way, can you update your original post?