Trouble with VPN/network instability, various ideas, please have a look if you can

Hi, I have various ideas and questions about trying to resolve an important issue with our setup at the moment.

We are attempting to create a scenario where a script automatically selects an IP from an ovpn list of IPs, feeds it to openvpn gui, and then connects us so we can use the Internet.

We are performing this using a master machine that controls number of virtual slave machines, powered by server hardware (excuse my lack of terminology). Our setup seems to work fine at first on new builds, but the stability of connectivity seems to decrease for some reason quickly over time. Sometimes we visibly see our network connection has dropped, and it reconnects almost immediately. This network instability seems to be affecting the rest of our system and making it break.

First thoughts:

• The home router we are using is struggling due to the workload. I don't know if this is a possibility at all. If it is, how should we approach testing it? We have run the system on just a lone machine, or 2 machines, reducing the workload, but still having the issue.

• We are on Windows 8, and have changed the Interface Metric in the adapter setting to 10

• We haven't tried a different vpn other than OpenVPN Gui and addresses from HMA. We are using this combo because openvpn lets us pick which vpns/lists we want to use, whereas just using HMA doesn't let you. Therefore, we are wondering if the vpn addresses we are using may be unstable, and/or if openvpn is unstable. Are either of these a possibility? I'm thinking that we should just email them and ask.

• Due to the fact that we are automating the connection procedure, we have encountered some bugs with Windows 8 , or from somewhere. As openvpn allows a max of 50 files in its config folder, and we use more vpn lists than that, we are using a script to move things in and out of the slave/virtual machines' folders to control them. Apparently we need to elevate permissions to allow this to happen, and the fix is to open the windows Network and Sharing Centre window. We just open it and it works. We got this fix off the internet and nobody there new why it worked at the time, but it increases our initial connectivity rate. Manually connecting openvpn doesn't require this or seem to produce this issue. This issue is possibly unrelated to the ongoing connection stability issue, which is the main problem.

• When we get successive/many network connection failures, it seems like it gives up altogether. We restore the problem host machine from a backup and it resolves for a while.

• We are wondering if there is a system setting or ovpn setting that will help us fix or further tamper with these connection and stability issues. Is there something we could have a look into that you're aware of? Is there a workaround to having to elevate Windows permissions constantly by opening the Sharing Centre?

• We are going to look at SoftEther vpn to see if using this instead of Openvpn will help, however we must find out if we can control it using command line so that we can incorporate it into our system

• Computer clocks are OK i think and not dying/resetting

• Again, could it be our home router that is causing any sort of issue related to being overloaded, overworked, anything? I don't think we are overworking it during most of our tests - we're just picking out a vpn from our list, connecting to it, and if it fails then we will pick out another one. Could a home router still get overloaded after a period from this?

Thank you so much for reading, any advise or direction whatsoever is appreciated immensely, including direction to a better or more appropriate place, reddit or otherwise, or even person - we would love to chat on skype or something with someone bored who could help - to get this instability issue sorted.