Here's the scenario, I have a user with a static IP issued from their cable company. They are able to succesfully VPN to the network, yet sometimes as soon as 5 minutes, sometimes an hour or more, the connection drops. Additionally the connection to the Internet drops as well. The only solution is to reboot both the computer and cable modem and all is well, for awhile. The cable company insists that their network is fine, I'm unable to prove that it really is their problem. Any suggestions. FYI I have 50 other clients using various ISP's with NO issues.
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bizarre vpn issue
- Thread starter tophre
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We use adelphia and also lose the connection on a regular basis...I've been blaming the Linksys VPN router because the problem is resolved as soon as I reboot the router. We are attempting to do a site to site vpn using two of these Linksys VPN routers and the other at home base never seems to have this problem. Adelphia is the service provider in both places.
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EddieVenus
Technical User
I can tell you that it may well be the router. If you test everything out, you will find that you can make the connection with out the router just fine, and with the router with issues.
The same problem happened to me, I tried everything, from a new Linksys (I claimed it was defective) to a different ISP. I even moved in the mean time and that did not clear things up. Then just as magically as it appeared it went away. Now I am running with the linksys befsp41 and with a befvp41 just fine. The latest firmware of course, which may or may not have been both the culprit and the solution.
I do belive that this problem can have many sources, so I do not put full blame on Linksys, I still use them even, but I do think that it can in fact be the little gateways that are the issue. I used to have to reset my gateway every 5-10 minutes while playing online games. Now I run VPNs from both a client through th egateways and from the vp41 itself and never have a problem with them. I have used Charter cable in WI, Time Warner in WI, TDS in WI and Sprint Broadband in CO. I have experienced this issue with all of them, in 4 differnet locations in 2 states, with 2 routers (1 model then BEFSP41). The VP41 has yet to give me issues, but the SP41 has been good for nearly 5 months now too.
I know that the routers themselvs stopped responding since I have a workshop full of machines, from 2-10 at any one time, plus 4 of my own, and they would all lose connectivity when I would play online. I thought that there was too much traffic for the tiny little processors that they must have, but I see no reason that it would happen durring games and not durring file sharring apps which use up my full bandwidth almost the entire time they are running, or why not durring concurrent web traffic from multiple machines at once while uploading and downloading files. But that was the nature of the beast.
If anyone has a good idea why other linksys equipt tunnels happen to fail, let me know. It is strange though that everyone seemed to have the linksys here, except maybe phoneguru.
Eddie Venus
The same problem happened to me, I tried everything, from a new Linksys (I claimed it was defective) to a different ISP. I even moved in the mean time and that did not clear things up. Then just as magically as it appeared it went away. Now I am running with the linksys befsp41 and with a befvp41 just fine. The latest firmware of course, which may or may not have been both the culprit and the solution.
I do belive that this problem can have many sources, so I do not put full blame on Linksys, I still use them even, but I do think that it can in fact be the little gateways that are the issue. I used to have to reset my gateway every 5-10 minutes while playing online games. Now I run VPNs from both a client through th egateways and from the vp41 itself and never have a problem with them. I have used Charter cable in WI, Time Warner in WI, TDS in WI and Sprint Broadband in CO. I have experienced this issue with all of them, in 4 differnet locations in 2 states, with 2 routers (1 model then BEFSP41). The VP41 has yet to give me issues, but the SP41 has been good for nearly 5 months now too.
I know that the routers themselvs stopped responding since I have a workshop full of machines, from 2-10 at any one time, plus 4 of my own, and they would all lose connectivity when I would play online. I thought that there was too much traffic for the tiny little processors that they must have, but I see no reason that it would happen durring games and not durring file sharring apps which use up my full bandwidth almost the entire time they are running, or why not durring concurrent web traffic from multiple machines at once while uploading and downloading files. But that was the nature of the beast.
If anyone has a good idea why other linksys equipt tunnels happen to fail, let me know. It is strange though that everyone seemed to have the linksys here, except maybe phoneguru.
Eddie Venus
Let me know if I am correct, you are using Nortel as the VPN client 3.8 or lower(or maybe another client that has not been fixed). What you are expeirancing is a very low dhcp lease from your isp (or router). What happens is your ISP with its low DHCP lease will try to renew with your computer, if it is unable to renew at 50% then it will try again at 87.5%(i think, or close to it) and if cant renew this time, your ISP is going to bump you off, as soon as that happens, your vpn connection drops, then your ISP comes back up. You can solve this by upgrading the VPN client or buying a router. If you already have a router, then set the dhcp lease to 24 hours. You can check your lease by going to Start>Run and typing in "cmd", at the command prompt type in "ipconfig /all".
With any nortel version over 4.15, if it is trying to renew the same IP address, it lets it and that solves that problem, but then you run into the IPSec Passthrough problem. It seems with all the routers out there, trying to handle IPSec passthrough differently there are a few routers out there that have problems and drops you every 5 to 10 minutes. This is because your routers are not passing the protocols correctly, they tend to hang on to them. Best thing to do is through your VPN into NAT by disabling "IPSec Passthrough" in your router, though most routers do not have this option. That is why our company had to force its users that are behind routers into NAT (a little trick that Nortel had us do) but this trick broke the functionality of the Dlink wireless.
I can go on and on about Nortel and have fixed a tremendous amount of users (over 1200 trouble tickets). Let me know if you are using Nortel and any problems that you are having.
With any nortel version over 4.15, if it is trying to renew the same IP address, it lets it and that solves that problem, but then you run into the IPSec Passthrough problem. It seems with all the routers out there, trying to handle IPSec passthrough differently there are a few routers out there that have problems and drops you every 5 to 10 minutes. This is because your routers are not passing the protocols correctly, they tend to hang on to them. Best thing to do is through your VPN into NAT by disabling "IPSec Passthrough" in your router, though most routers do not have this option. That is why our company had to force its users that are behind routers into NAT (a little trick that Nortel had us do) but this trick broke the functionality of the Dlink wireless.
I can go on and on about Nortel and have fixed a tremendous amount of users (over 1200 trouble tickets). Let me know if you are using Nortel and any problems that you are having.
Sorry I forgot to tell you the fix for the Linksys router. If you are using Nortel, it worked find in nortel v3.7 but in 4.15 or the latest 4.6, it seemed to hang a little. Update the bios from the LINKSYS home page and then log into the router 192.168.1.1......and go to the advanced tab and the filters tab should be the first one your on, at the bottom is "ipsecpassthroug" disable it and save, you should be fine
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