VPN comes and goes

[rmw2]

I was in a hotel recently along with a co worker was in another room up stairs and on the other end.

Early in our 4 day stay he had some intermittent trouble with VPN back to the office network, but finally his woes went away.

Both of us were using Ethernet connections as we were too far from the lobby to get a wireless signal.

In my case, however, I had problems for all 4 days, and worked the IT guy at the hotel hard for several hours.

I could get VPN to go through at about 4 AM in the morning (I was on the west coast having come from one hour ahead of east coast time in South America so I was up early) and/or after midnight, but in normal working hours, late evenings, afternoons, morning around breakfast hours, the VPN would get no farther than the "connecting to XXX.XXX.XX.XX...." screen, and after a while would give me the 800 error.

When it connects properly, it flashes by the connection, security, authentification screens so fast that they are a blur.

I finally went to the lobby and got VPN to connect flawlessly and repeatedly via their wireless connection in order to prove it was not my machine. But it would not connect on their net.

Meanwhile, my co-worker was upstairs working his fingers to the bone.

Anybody got any ideas> The IT guy and the tech support he called were all stumped.

I can't be hostage to intermittent VPN access to my world. It works fine in the hotel I am in this week. amd from home over my cable modem (wireless). I had the problem in a hotel in England recently, too.

rmw2

 

[ROUTERKID1]

I would say it comes down to how the firewall for the hard wired connection is set up. I bet the Wireless connection had its own firewall whit less restrictive rules in place.

 

[rmw2]

How would that explain that I could get on the hard wired connection at some times (apparent low usage times) and others not (apparent high usage times.

rmw2

 

[minxca]

I don't remember, but I think you can only establish one vpn connection from the same ip address

 

[JOAMON]

I think winoto hit the nail on the head. You are trying to establish a VPN from the same peer address for both clients. Maybe wireless worked in lobby because it was on a different internet circuit than the hotel wired internet.

 

[rmw2]

That would make sense. If my co-worker was upstairs and on our VPN, then that would explain it. Obviously he was in bed nighty tighty when I was up at 4:00 AM fighting jet lag. That was one of the times I could get on.

The wireless would have been it's own IP address.

Thanks for the help.

rmw2

 

[JOAMON]

Some hotels give you a more costly option for internet which gives you your own public IP address. This would allow each person there own VPN connection as they will be from seperate peer addresses.