The tunnel was alive.
Silence. Then, the VPN status icon turned Green .
Classic. The jungle’s network had a Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) of only 1300 bytes. The VPN wanted 1500. The packets were getting shredded like paper in a storm.
I had learned this trick three routers ago. You cannot click your way to the VPN tab. You must navigate by hand.
Inside, three options: PPTP, L2TP, IPSec . My contact on the outside gave me an L2TP over IPSec profile. "Untouchable," they said.