PublicVPN.com's online support will try to answer all your questions and solve whatever issues you might have.
Note that only Mac OS X 10.2, Mac OS X 10.3, Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X 10.5, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 are officially supported. While PublicVPN.com will try and help with other operating systems, our main area of expertise is with the previously mentioned OSs. We will, however, try our best to get your system working.
For help, email support@publicvpn.com.As an FYI, the iPhone problem seems to be UDP related. We're working on Apple with this, hopefully a fix will be forthcoming in iPhone firmware 2.0.
Note that you can also set your iPhone up using our proxy. See below for more information.
Guyana's telecom provider has been blocking access to our servers over the last week or so. If you are a current user and are blocked, there may not be much we can do; contact support for alternate IP addresses. It does look like they're blocking our alternate IP addresses for some users; if that's the case for you, we'll issue you a refund for your unused balance.
Note that Belize blocks on a per-user basis, not systemwide. It may be that Guyana does the same.
You probably want to complain to your ISP about the VPN block as well.
Our primary and backup servers went down at about 11:35pm Pacific Time due to what looks to be a power failure of some sort. Right now (2/3/08, 12:55PM) we got one of the backup servers up and running. However, L2TP/IPsec doesn't seem to be accepting connections. We had to do a lot of reconstruction, so if you can't log in, try changing your website password and trying to log into the VPN again.
Update: L2TP/IPsec seems to be OK
We have finally posted our Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) setup instructions. See the link to the left.
SMTP access has been disabled again. So for now, if you have a mail server that you use, email support@publicvpn.com and it'll be put on our whitelist.
Currently SMTP access has been re-enabled. We're implementing rate limiting on port 25 connections, which should make us completely unattractive to spammers. Note tat it might take longer to send mail due to this change.
Apparently someone has been using us as a SPAM point. Thus, port 25 access has been closed off. That shouldn't affect most users, but if you suddenly find that you can't send mail you can use our email server. See the setup instrutions at left for the basic settings.
The VPN works fine with Mac OS X 10.5, as expected. Formal instructions are coming soon. Internet Connect is gone, so you set up everything from the System Preferences->Network pane.
WARNING: there's a big gotcha in the setup: the Leopard VPN doesn't send traffic over the VPN by default. To remedy this, go to System Preferences->Network and click on your VPN connection. Click the "Advanced..." button, and in the "Options" tab make sure that "Send all traffic over VPN connection" is checked.
I can't tell if this is just for new connections or if it applies to connections that were migrated using "Archive & Install," since I just installed over my test machine. So for now, be sure to check your VPN settings after installing Leopard.
For iPhone users, we've set up an experimental proxy. That way you can get to the web when you're connected to the VPN. The VPN DNS bug exists in the 1.1.1 firmware, so you may or may not be able to use your iPhone when connected to a VPN.
If you can't seem to do anything, try using the proxy instead. You won't be able to get mail, but you can use Safari at least.
Go to the home screen, then choose Settings->General->Network->VPN->Settings. In the proxy settings, click the "Manual" tab and enter the following information:
Server: 172.31.0.1
Port: 8080
Authentication: Off
We've filed a bug with Apple about the issue; hopefully they'll fix it in the next firmware update.
There was an outage today from approximately 6:30 AM PDT to 11:AM PDT due to a DoS attack from, of all places, Guyana. All users from Guyana please contact support for either a refund or hardware setup instructions.
UPDATE: the IP address has been isolated, so most users from Guyana should be OK.
Note that BTL seems to have blocked access to our servers. It may be worth it to drop them a line and complain. Please contact support for alternete IP addresses.
If you're using iPhone software 1.0, there's a bug where you have to type the password in every time you connect. That's fixed in the iPhone software 1.01.
However, iPhone 1.01 has a different problem: DNS resolution doesn't work if you're connected to a VPN, making the connection pretty useless. Hopefully Apple will fix this in an iPhone 1.0.2 update.
Due to problems with the support provider, support is now being handled in-house again. Sorry for the problems that the switch may have caused.
If you’re using gateway.publicvpn.net as your SMTP server, you’ll need to change your port number from 25 to 587 or 3115. This should improve mail sending reliability.
Yet another DoS attack occurred. We've isolated what the attackers are doing, and we should be OK from now on.
We suffered a DoS attack today. Traffic tailed off enough for us to get everything going again. Right now we're trying to find a way to identify and remedy these events sooner. Thanks for your patience.
If you connect to the VPN but web pages take forever to load, you may be running into the MTU issue. See here for more information and a fix!
There seem to be more and more issues with Hotspot providers and PPTP connections, namely, they don’t allow PPTP. If you’re travelling overseas or if you’re in the US using off–brand hotspots, using L2TP/IPsec will connect more reliably than PPTP.
Of course, if one connection type doesn’t work, try the other one; some providers allow one and not the other.
We're reserving 1AM Pacific Time for continuing maintenance. If we need to do anything, we'll do it at this time. Please note that the service may be unavailable for a few minutes around this time.
Posted: 21–Apr–07
If you’re have comments, questions, or suggestions for new features, feel free to email us! Some of the best ideas come from you, our users. Just email us at info@publicvpn.com.
New Windows Vista setup instructions are now online! If you’re using Windows Vista and haven’t been able to figure out the all–new configuration, this is for you! Read the instructions here.
Note: we now recommend that Windows users use L2TP/IPsec by default instead of PPTP. This has been reflected in the Windows Vista setup instructions and in the FAQ.
Posted: 22–Apr–07
We're reserving 1AM Pacific Time for continuing maintenance. If we need to do anything, we'll do it at this time. Please note that the service may be unavailable for a few minutes around this time.
Posted: 21–Apr–07
The Terms of Service state that concurrent logins are prohibited. That means that you can't use your account on more than one device at one time. If you have two laptops, you can either (1) have one login that they share, making sure that only one laptop uses the account at a time, or (2) buy two logins.
This policy hasn't been enforced until today (28–Mar–07). Now, when you log in the other logins using your username will be logged out.
Old news items can be found here.
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