topic Re: AOVPN issues in Everything else

AOVPN issues

pfurness — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 19:39:39 GMT

I work in an NHS hospital and have been given a hospital laptop, set up to allow me to access confidential patient data and hospital systems from home, out of office hours. With appropriate security, of course. Apparently it uses AOVPN to do this.

It's worked perfectly for several years. Then, without me changing anything, about 3 weeks a ago it stopped connecting. I can connect to hospital emails, but hospital network drives and applications won't connect.

The hospital IT staff have taken the laptop away, reinstalled everything and can't understand why it won't work from home. It connects perfectly when I'm at the hospital. I've made no changes at all to my system configuration at home. The IT team do not have reports of others with the same problem. So now the IT team are suggesting that PlusNet must have changed something, and it's blocking my access.

Searching the Forum, there are several threads about problems that sound very similar to mine - but they are from 2022 or 2023. They don't seem to suggest a simple solution. But where the problem was resolved it seems to have been due to PlusNet engineers doing something (described in terminology that I don't understand).

It feels as though PlusNet must have changed something. But what? And can the change be reversed please?

Any help will be gratefully received. In NHS-speak, this is a 'patient safety issue'!

Dr Peter Furness

Re: AOVPN issues

Champnet — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 20:06:01 GMT

Looks like a change in external IP address.

Are you on a fixed IP (it would have cost you a fiver) ?

Re: AOVPN issues

pvmb — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:03:52 GMT

Could this be another example of this: Blocked Sites? - Plusnet Community

...Along with associated and similar threads.

Re: AOVPN issues

MisterW — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 06:36:00 GMT

The IT team do not have reports of others with the same problem. So now the IT team are suggesting that PlusNet must have changed something, and it's blocking my access.

@pfurness did the IT team check their VPN server logs to see why the connection isnt working ?

Looks like a change in external IP address.

Its either a change in IP, which your VPN server is now blocking. Get your IT team to check why

OR if you already have a static IP, its a VPN stale connection from that IP which is not allowing a new connection. Again get the IT team to check their logs

Re: AOVPN issues

Champnet — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 06:35:39 GMT

@pvmb My response should be the start of general troubleshooting, if you’re right and NHS staff are being denied access to their sites then whoever, Plusnet, BT, NHS etc need to urgently throw resources into solving the problem.