Problem with PIA and wifi at Starbucks cafe
Howdy,
I was in two diff Starbucks cafes in London and I couldn't connect to PIA. My setup (Mac, Viscosity, and nodes in 3 diff countries) works flawlessly. Didn't have problems connecting before, between or after these two visits.
What is going on (if anybody has a theory) how can I bypass that situation in the future?
Thanks in advance
I was in two diff Starbucks cafes in London and I couldn't connect to PIA. My setup (Mac, Viscosity, and nodes in 3 diff countries) works flawlessly. Didn't have problems connecting before, between or after these two visits.
What is going on (if anybody has a theory) how can I bypass that situation in the future?
Thanks in advance
Comments
Thank you for your response! Public WiFi is tricky to connect to because most public WiFi's block (blacklist) VPN use such as banks, school, hotels, etc to connect to their services. Public WiFi issues fall outside of our support as it is the responsibility of a 3rd party. Unfortunately, blacklisting of IP's is a very common problem with VPN's. Most WiFi areas will not connect due to how that certain WiFi's security has been set up. Since this service can be set up in a number of ways, it is virtually impossible to allow our VPN to connect to every single one. Due to this, we cannot guarantee you will be able to connect to our VPN while on wireless network, however I would be happy to provide instructions that may help bypass those blocks!
The ports that the application is connecting over can often cause issues like this if there is a filter restricting or be blocking the connection. Changing those ports may resolve this issue. Please use the following instructions to change the ports in our app: PLEASE NOTE: THESE STEPS ARE FOR MOBILE PHONE DEVICES - BUT ARE NOT MUCH DIFFERENT FOR LAPTOP AND PC DEVICES.
1. Access your application on your device
4. Within the app settings, you will see a section titled Connection.2. Once you are in the application, please select the three diagonal lines in the top left corner
3. This will bring up a sub-menu with several options. please select Settings.
a. The first option under the Connection section is Protocol
5. The protocol selected will change the settings that you can select.b. Tap on Protocol. From there, you can choose to connect using OpenVPN or IPsec.
a. IPsec settings will only allow you to connect to our servers and change the application view to Dark Mode.
b. OpenVPN settings will let you to connect to all of our servers, change ports, change encryption settings and send debug logs.
For more detailed instructions with pictures as well as video instructions, please visit this article from our help center:
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/helpdesk/kb/articles/i-have-trouble-connecting-or-the-connection-drops-frequently-changing-ports
If this does not work or you have further questions, let us know and we will be here to assist! Thank you for your patience and for allowing us to serve you for your VPN needs. If you need further assistance, please let us know! - PIA CS TEAM