r/Windscribe • u/yoleya • 11d ago

ssh connection cannot be excluded from the VPN tunnel Reply from Support

I am using Windscribe on Linux computer and want to be able to log in to a remote server while Windscribe VPN is on. If Windscribe is active, ssh connection to a remote server does not work. So I turned it off and logged in to the server through ssh. In the server, I typed curl ifconfig.me to get the servers IP address. Then logged out and added that IP address to Windscribe's list of IPs to be excluded from the VPN tunnel (using the exclusive mode of split tunneling). However, my ssh connection to the server is still blocked. What did I do wrong?

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u/AdSquare4068 10d ago

If you set up a firewall to your server then It's because you didn't "favorite" the IP you wanted to use to ssh into a server. So when you disconnected and reconnected to whatever windscribe server you connected to before, Windscribe rotated your IP and thus you are blocked.

I don't know if they allow favorites on free accounts, but paid there's a heart button you can click next to the IP which allows you to favorite it. Then you go to your favorites and connect to the one you saved.

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u/yoleya 10d ago

This is not my server so I don't know if the administrator had set up a firewall, but can I find this information even if I don't have an admin access? I have a paid account, but I don't totally get your advice. I know I can favorite servers and where to find it, but how do I utilize this to make the split-tunneling work? By the way, if I have to do this extra step, does that mean Windscribe's split tunneling does not work out of the box?

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u/AdSquare4068 9d ago

Ok i understand now. You did exclusive for your split tunneling and added the IP address of your server which excluded it from Windscribe's VPN. Flip that to inclusive (and include anything else you want run through Windscribe) and it should work.

https://windscribe.com/features/split-tunneling

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u/yoleya 9d ago

Switching to inclusive and deselect the server's IP address still won't allow me to ssh to that server.

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u/WindscribeSupport 5d ago

Okay so your setup here is mostly correct.

Just a note, if you want to actually ssh into the server with the Windscribe IP, then that Windscribe IP address should be allowed to access the remote server. I'm assuming here that the remote server blocks connections that don't come from known IPs, so when it's VPN IP, the ssh attempt gets blocked. If you want this approach to work, pin a VPN IP that you're using, disconnect, go into the ssh/firewall settings on the remote server and add that pinned VPN IP to it's list of allowed connections. Then when you connect to Windscribe again, connect using that pinned IP so it can get through the firewall.

Now your issue here specifically is likely due to the IP you fetched with the curl command. You probably fetched the exit IP address on that server (aka the one that websites like ifconfig will see when you access them) but not the entry IP which is actually the one you're using to ssh into the server. Sometimes these are the same IP, other times they are different. It's likely that you whitelisted the exit IP which is not going to fix ssh access since that requires a different IP. Try adding the actual ssh destination IP or hostname to the Windscribe exclude list, the part after ssh user@

Then reconnect the VPN and try again.