Remote Access (VPN)
Connecting a VPN back to your own network while you're away is a common way to keep using a home Enigma2 box, NAS, or DLNA server from outside the house. Most things work exactly as they do at home, but a couple of behaviours are specific to being on a VPN rather than your actual local network — this page covers what to expect.
DLNA/UPnP discovery doesn't work over VPN
Discovering DLNA/UPnP media servers relies on a network technique called multicast, which almost all consumer VPN setups (WireGuard, OpenVPN, and most home-router VPN servers) don't carry across the tunnel — even a VPN that otherwise routes ordinary traffic to your home network perfectly well. This is a limitation of how VPN tunnels work in general, not something specific to Cordbox.
Playing a DLNA source once it's added works fine over VPN — it's only the discovery step that depends on multicast.
Workaround: add the source manually by its device description URL instead of using Discover. You'll need to know this URL ahead of time — either note it down while you're on your home network (Discover Devices shows it), or check the server's own settings. When adding a DLNA/UPnP source, choose the manual entry and paste the URL in directly.
Enigma2: Live TV works over VPN, but Recordings doesn't
If Live TV plays fine over VPN but tapping Recordings returns "Couldn't Load Recordings" with a message like "The box returned an unexpected response", this is a setting on the box's own OpenWebIF software, not a Cordbox issue.
OpenWebIF restricts access to its own web/API service to your box's local network by default — a VPN's assigned address, even though it's a private address like your home network's own, isn't automatically trusted the same way. Live TV isn't affected because it streams through the box's separate native streaming port, which isn't part of OpenWebIF's own access-controlled service at all; Recordings (and anything else that goes through OpenWebIF's API) is.
Fix: on the box itself, go to Menu → Plugins → OpenWebif and turn on "Enable access from VPNs" (wording may vary slightly depending on your box's software). If you'd rather not change that, enabling a username/password for OpenWebIF's own web interface in the same settings screen works too — an authenticated request is trusted regardless of where it's coming from.
Casting an M3U source that's only reachable over VPN
Casting works differently: rather than your device just watching a stream, it hands the stream's address to a Chromecast or Apple TV, which then connects to it independently. Neither of those has a VPN of its own, so if the M3U source is only reachable while your own device is on a VPN, they can't reach it directly, even though Cordbox itself can.
M3U sources have a per-source Casting Route setting for this — set it to Through This Device and your device relays the stream over your local network instead, for both AirPlay and Chromecast. This only works while Cordbox stays open in the foreground. See Casting for the full setting.
This particular setting only exists for M3U, but a VPN-only Xtream Codes, Stalker, or Enigma2 source — including the Enigma2 case just above, once Live TV itself is reachable over VPN — doesn't need one: casting a live channel from these source types always goes through Just-In-Time Transcode rather than a direct hand-off, which relays through this device automatically as a side effect, VPN or not. The trade-off is that Just-In-Time Transcode (both the main toggle and Apply to Live Channels) has to be turned on for the cast button to appear on a live channel from these sources at all — see Casting for the full picture.