My colleague and I have been trying to setup a VPN server for devs who wanted to work from home. We asked our sysadmin (who's in another office in another country) to try connecting to the server. She replied after a while that she was unable to connect. We then asked her what port she tried connecting on and she replied, "No, I didn't use any port. I am connecting directly using the hostname".

Why should you have to define port if you are using standard ports?

Zerotier SDN should help.

@Linux It not about specifying a port. She thought it didn't use any port because she was "connecting directly".

@exceptionalGuy
I see nothing wrong. If she uses a vpn client there is no problem.

@Linux You still don't get it. It's not that she didn't know which port it used. She didn't know it used a port at all. I'm talking about the Transport Layer knowledge here.

@exceptionalGuy
I dont think you get it.
Depending on what kind of VPN you have set up and what client she uses - it uses a standard port if no other has been define.

And you should be able to see what port she was trying to connect to in your firewall.

So if you are using IPSEC - port 500 is used
PPTP - 1723
OpenVPN - 1194

Her answer is actually making sense.

@Linux We're just going around in circles. Never mind. xD

Well, the information you provide is not that much so therefore I am thinking that the answer from the sysadmin make sense from the information you have given ;)

@Linux Well, I'll make one more attempt. xD
We do use OpenVPN and the port is set to 1194. That's all fine.
But as a sysadmin, she does not have the basic knowledge of how "ports" work, in general. For example, I'm quite sure she thinks that when you type the IP address of an HTTP server on the browser, it just makes a connection "without any ports" because she hasn't specified any ports.
In this case, she's not only unaware of the existence of the port 1194, she thought the connection DOES NOT USE any ports because she did not mention any. You get what I'm saying? :D

Let’s hope that’s not the case, but it happens. I like to assume the best and then let them prove otherwise.

@Diactoros I thought the same too. But after multiple instances now, I gave up hope.

@exceptionalGuy :/ ouch yeah that’s really not a good sign then. Perhaps they’re open to learning?

@Diactoros I don't know about that since she's in the other office and I only talk to her when I need something. I only call her when it's absolutely necessary now. Otherwise, I get things done some other way if there's any other way. xD