Router address refuses to connect in Vivaldi but not in Edge or in Guest Profile

[papalpenguin]

Yes I think I said yes these does work

[yngve]

@papalpenguin said in Router address refuses to connect in Vivaldi but not in Edge or in Guest Profile:

these does work

That is because it is an IP address, not a host in the asus.com domain, so the HSTS policy they configured for their entire domain, including the router alias, does not apply.

[Pathduck]

I can still access my router at both:
http://router.asus.com/
https://router.asus.com:8443/

Trying to access by IP 192.168.0.1 will give me a redirect to router.asus.com as the router adds itself to the local DNS - unless the user is bypassing the router by setting both primary and secondary DNS to a different provider, or (more likely) using DoH.

I have the auth method set to BOTH and the port to 8443. Asus specifically recommends to use high port numbers, not sure why but 8443 works fine.

In vivaldi://net-internals/#hsts querying asus.com comes up "Not Found".
HSTS Preload status gives:
Status: asus.com was previously submitted to the preload list, but has been removed.
https://hstspreload.org/?domain=asus.com

It would be interesting to know what port @papalpenguin is trying to access or getting redirected to, as ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED means the port is not listening (actually, actively refusing connections). What does the URL say? If it tries to redirect to 443 that would most likely fail since by default the router does not listen to this port.

[papalpenguin]

I am using the right port here's what I got
https://imgur.com/gallery/Kkrc6qc

[yngve]

@Pathduck said in Router address refuses to connect in Vivaldi but not in Edge or in Guest Profile:

In vivaldi://net-internals/#hsts querying asus.com comes up "Not Found".

You probably haven't visited the Asus main domain recently. I did a test earlier tonight in Chrome. Before I had not found, after loading the main Asus page, I had an HSTS entry registered which included subdomains.

[Pathduck]

@yngve said in Router address refuses to connect in Vivaldi but not in Edge or in Guest Profile:

You probably haven't visited the Asus main domain recently.

True. But I did that last night, and it still didn't show up. But it did this morning, so possibly a restart made sure it was added, or maybe it just takes "some time"? Anyway, it does show up now, with subdomains - stupid Asus

@papalpenguin This is not the same error message you got earlier. So now at least you're connecting to the correct port (8443).

But you'll need to add the certificate to the Windows certificate store. There's a lot of documentation out there on how to do this so that's outside the scope of this topic, but I'll try to help if needed.

Note also this is not specific to Vivaldi. All browsers will respect the HSTS setting for the asus.com domain and redirect your requests to the "secure" port 443, which obviously the router does not listen on, and causing the CONNECTION_REFUSED error page.

Looks like you're also running a custom firmware on your router (Merlin) but that shouldn't make a difference as long as the browser trusts the cert.

I will try to see if setting the HTTPS port to 443 on the router works better, even if it's not recommended by Asus.
Edit: Not possible, Asus force you to use high ports, so probably a very good reason for that.

[Pathduck]

@yngve I also did a test now with Chrome 112 and apparently, whatever caused the self-signed router cert to fail earlier and forcing me to set
chrome://flags/#chrome-root-store-enabled
is no longer there and I don't need the flag (for now at least).

[asutcliffe25]

I just started getting this page in the last 1-2 days. This has not been an issue previously and I am able to get to the router login page with other browsers. How do i proceed with fixing this? The above information isn't really clear to me on how to resolve this.

[DoctorG]

@asutcliffe25 Your router blocks you and refuses connection.
Does it work with https://www.asusrouter.com/ or https://www.asusrouter.com:8443?
Can you open with IP of the router? http://192.168.50.1/ oder https://192.168.50.1/
Try with Guest Profile and tell if that works.

[asutcliffe25]

@DoctorG
no issue with guest profile - works fine.
https://www.asusrouter.com/ - does not work
https://www.asusrouter.com:8443 - does not work
router ip- works momentarily then closes the page as connection refused.

[DoctorG]

@asutcliffe25 perhaps a extension causing this or a broken browser profile.

And check if deactivating Vivaldi blocker for the web page helps.

If you start in Windows cmd.exe, exit current Vivaldi, type this command
start vivaldi --disable-extensions
and hit Return. Does it work? If yes, one of your extensions causing the block.

[edwardp]

This post is deleted!

[asutcliffe25]

@DoctorG
yep that worked. Even more interesting, after closing the disabled ext instance and reopening normally it continues to work

[DoctorG]

@asutcliffe25 And which extension caused the block?

[asutcliffe25]

@DoctorG I have no idea, I use very few ext's and half of them are disabled.

[asutcliffe25]

This issue has resurfaced for me again. I tried the previous suggested fix by opening vivaldi with extensions disabled and that didn't work this time. I think last time was simply a coincidence.
This started yesterday for whatever reason, yesterday I unplugged my router and plugged it back in and rebooted my main machine. That fixed it for a day, now it's back again. Other browsers work fine. This seems to be an issue with how the vivaldi browser handles internet traffic or resolves DNS?...though, I'm not sure if it's on the router side or vivaldi side? Whichever the case, this issue is specific to the vivaldi browser

[Chas4]

Try clearing cache

Not sure if ASUS does any internal web server (the GUI) updates with the firmware updates they send out