Hi, having an awful time with this, and appears to be a common problem.
Boss has just joined Orange Max as he wanted the VOIP for the free calls to the continent. He has a laptop with XP Home and connects to his office PC running XP Pro. At my own home (using a Netgear DG834) his laptop is all OK, the VPN connects and then the remote desktop connects with no problems. I assume from this that the vpn and remote desktop is configured correctly on the laptop and at work.
At his home on the Livebox I was able to (at first) connect the VPN - but the remote desktop - which appears to begin the login process fails to authenticate username or password. Several swears later and the VPN failed to even connect.
I have tried turning off the firewall on the livebox and setting a port rule to pass port3389 - but not sure if I was configuring this correctly - what should the server IP address be? The local Ip of his remote machine or the routers outward facing IP address? Paperwork on this livebox appears to be zero.
I am going back next week to have another go, with another router to prove it is the livebox, but I cannot swop permanantly because of the VOIP requirment!..
I would be very very grateful for anyone wh has got this to work to point me in the right direction! Thanks in advance.
Hi, I'm not offering help I'm afraid, but maybe I'm having the same problem.
Basically, I'm wondering if Orange have blocked VPN.
I am not on Orange, but my brother-in-law is. For a while now we had a VPN connection between our homes, both using Linksys AG241 routers which handle all the VPN, so our entire networks are linked. As recently as last weekend, this worked fine.
Yesterday, however, it did not. My router still reports that it has established a VPN connection , but nothing works over that connection. Ping, browser access to his router's admin page, vnc etc. All not working. Since this is VPN, I presume they cannot know what protocols etc are travelling down the encrypted pipe, so it is only VPN itself that they could block.
Have Orange, in the last week, started to block VPN? I heard some ISP's do, since they regard it as a sign of business use.
I'm guessing the routers claim to have established a VPN may not mean much, and what happens is that the routers agree on the VPN tunnel (which is done outside of any tunnel since there isn't one yet), and this all goes well. Only when they then switch to the agreed tunnel does the data get blocked. Do the routers actually test the tunnel they have just set up? Again, I'm guessing here, but I think they do not.
After a while, the router decides the tunnel is disconnected again. Maybe because it eventually recognises the failure. But I am not sure of this since, even with keep-alive running, Orange change his IP address regularly (I never saw such aggressive behaviour from anyone else!), and they could simply have done this.
My Screen Sharing facillity (we use Macs) also did not work yesterday, either through the VPN or through iChat. Now the via-iChat thing could be either a coincidental failure of iChat servers, or a sign that Orange have actually blocked several services recently. I'll try everything again later to see if any of this has cleared up.
I hope this helps to shed light on where our problems are coming from!
I have a horrid feeling I have given my boss very bad advice with this.
He took ages to give the go ahead, and I think Orange restructured their packages in the meantime. South Africa I now learn is not free via VOIP and cost 10ppm - so I could have done better keeping the broadband and voice seperate
When I get a chance I will get into his house and have another go with a different router. Some postings I have trawled through tend to imply its not the best box for VPN. If thas the case he may have to swop routers to access work and back to the supplied box for VOIP. I tried tech support today - sorry not racist but some Indian in a call center who has no clue what I am on about is not support. I will try again tomorrow and hope for someone more competent.
I would love to hear how you get on, we can either cry or cheer together if we get them working!
At the boss's last night I was able to form a vpn tunnel - or at least the system said I had. A friend at the other end looked at the router which showed the VPN as up and running. However no remote desktop - no shares available.
I unplugged the livebox and tried an old BT cable router with VPN pass through, same problem.
I cannot believe once the VPN is up and running that Orange would be able to 'interfere' with it? But if not Orange why can I run it at my own home? wahh
This is what happened with me. As I speculated above, I'm guessing the VPN is negotiated using allowed protocols / ports (it can't be done in a tunnel, since there isn't one yet) and that all works ok. Once the systems agree on the tunnel, I guess they just report back that it's done, unaware that nothing is allowed to traverse it and without having tested it. It expects the agreed tunnel to work.
My router says the tunnel is there for a while, before quietly changing the status to disconnected. Again, I'm guessing it's aware that nothing has used the tunnel (even the keep-alive it is set to use) and so closes it down.
My brother-in-law is away for the week now, so I'm not able to do any further tests.
If I do find an answer, naturally I'll let you know! But I am now convinced by what you've said that it's Orange blocking VPN traffic.
Just got off the phone with Orange tech support spoke to Lina - Orange Livebox is fully VPN passthrough supported and they do not have any policy regarding the blocking of VPN traffic. Although it is not supported by Orange tech support and it is up to the user to set up and resolve any issues..
So hoping this is a good thing from our point of view...
And means I am not tecnically competent
Well, that's good news. Did it sound like a knowledgeable 'no' or an assumed 'no' since she didn't really know?
And it leaves us with a problem! I have this Linksys AG241 here and at various other locations. All the VPN's work fine except that one, and that worked fine up to a week ago. Unless his router went faulty? But that won't explain your issue!!
Weeeellll I was able to understand her! I think it was a standard resposnse from a database - I would not have classified her as a knuckle dragger, perhaps competent first line support staff would be fair. BUT they say it works - if it turns out later that it does not, then I think I might be justified in attemtpting to terminate the contract. I had checked this before ordering the service so feel very let down if it turns out to be them.
I have had an awful week of this so I am happy to grab hold of any good news. I agree with you that it is mighty odd that what works in one location fails to work over the Orange service.
Will ignore it today and do something different, then pick up my laptop and take that over to his house and give that a try
Thanks for input. According to SamKnows. Two of the Three local exchanges are identical with Orange LLU and adsl / adslmax present. The third main exchange has same plus several other LLU providers and SSL.
Thanet Kent, VPN server
Westgate Kent ME
Birchington Kent Boss
Looks like westgate and Birchington are identical - unless its a setup issue with Orange ( I use Madasafish) - so would assume VPN should be OK at both locations.
CURED !! To Dangermouse, Orange VPN pass through is available to me and working... Just been to the boss's house and all is fine. I cannot belive this is your problem, but to all those who gave suggestions comments....
The VPN tunnel was being formed, the problem lay within the IP address scheme. The workshop DHCP range assigned being 192.168.1.xx my house where it worked 192.168.0.xx..
His Orange router 192.168.1.xx I altered my router to match his IP range and mine immediately gave same problem..
I think what happens is that when you attempt to form a remote desktop connection or browse the pc by IP address, the dhcp lookup table assumes as its a local IP address it must be internal to the network, and never looks down the VPN! I altered my works router to 192.168.11.xx which is still within private IP allocations to prevcent the same thing happening again.
Appreciate anyone who can confirm my educated guess on what the router is doing with the IP addresss'. And a big thankyou for all those that took the trouble to suggest possible problems. They all lead me to the answer (which came to me a 3AM one restless night )
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