topic Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet in Full Fibre

Working from home, cannot connect to internet

russells9 — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 16:18:02 GMT

Hi. I am able to work from home but since getting a new Plusnet One router, I cannot connect to work servers. Have contacted work IT department and the issue seems to be VPN and Plusnet. Using Cisco Anyconnect Secure Mobility Client.
Have tried to look at other posts without any success. Tried to contact Plusnet support but offered no help at all.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

Baldrick1 — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 16:37:48 GMT

@russells9 wrote:
Tried to contact Plusnet support but offered no help at all.

There are two possible reasons for this.

1. You are on the standard residential service and this is considered business use, which is contrary to the Plusnet service Terms and Conditions.

2. This is way outside of the scope of the provision of your basic broadband package and agents do not have the necessary skills.

Hopefully a fellow customer will offer advice.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

corringham — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 17:03:37 GMT

Lots of people have problems with VPNs and unfortunately Plusnet support usually can't help - they are a budget ISP, and just don't have the capacity to cover all the permutations of VPN clients/servers/settings etc.

Also, whether you are on the residential or business tariff makes no difference to VPNs.

I have used AnyConnect (and several other VPNs) successfully with Plusnet, so it is possible.

The key is to identify just what the problem is - ideally that means getting access to client and/or server logs. Your IT department may be able to help with that. Depending on how locked down your client is, you may be able to enable some level of debugging at your end.

If you identify a specific problem or see a specific error then post that here, as someone may be able to recognise the issue.

One issue that crops up from time to time is that the ISP address you're allocated can be listed as being in some other country (usually USA), and some servers are configured to reject connections from outside some geographic boundary (e.g. UK only).

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

Alex — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 18:52:23 GMT

Sounds like you got a new router and your external IP has changed when you disconnected and installed it so it which may be a problem if your work are using GeoIP services which records could be wrong.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

kmr1962 — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 20:15:56 GMT

From past experience, you need to enable "port clamping" in the advanced settings of the router

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

Gandalf — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 20:23:56 GMT

Hi there,

I'm sorry to see you're having issues getting your VPN to connect. Unless I'm mistaking this for another type of VPN I believe that the Cisco AnyConnect doesn't play well with certain dynamic IP ranges (I could be wrong though)

I'd agree with Alex in that it doesn't sound like a fault with the router, it may be that you've got a different IP now through disconnecting your previous router and setting up your new one.

Having said that, can you check if the broadband firewall is on? I believe anything apart from Low or Off will affect the ability for VPNs to connect. If you're unsure how to there's instructions Here.

If the firewall is switched off or set to Low, it may be worth powering down your router for 65 minutes to attempt to get a new IP address, although dynamic IPs are rather sticky nowadays in that the chances are you may get the same one back as they're allocated from a relatively small pool specific to your location.

Let us know how you get on.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

Alex — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 08:52:54 GMT

Thanks @Gandalf

It may be worth mentioning to the OP, that they should consider paying the one-off £5 charge for a static IP, which should avoid all this hassle in the future?

I am not sure if you agree.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

russells9 — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 13:09:46 GMT

Thank you for all your replies. I have changed the firewall and port clamping but still not working.

For the static IP do I just need to contact Customer Services?

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

Alex — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 13:15:24 GMT

Yes I think so, or a member of staff may pick this up from here and contact you.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

MisterW — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 13:21:47 GMT

@russells9 you can get a static IP from the member centre. IIRC it's on the 'broadband' tab.

Actually I'm not sure you can anymore, I've had a static ip for a long time but when I go to the 'configure static ip' option, it says it's not available on my account!!

Thinking about it, I seem to recall seeing something like this a while ago but cant find it....

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

russells9 — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 13:38:07 GMT

Yes, just tried and states not available on your account for me too. ☹️

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

MisterW — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 13:47:14 GMT

You could try enabling the Broadband firewall at the Low setting, that should be compatible with a vpn.

I'm sure I've seen somewhere that enabling the firewall automatically sets a static ip. Having enabled the firewall you will need to disconnect and reconnect the pppoe session for it to take effect. Then check if your ip has changed. If the firewall upsets the vpn then turn it back off and reset the session again and check the ip again.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

Baldrick1 — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 14:56:59 GMT

@MisterW wrote:

@russells9 you can get a static IP from the member centre. IIRC it's on the 'broadband' tab.

Actually I'm not sure you can anymore, I've had a static ip for a long time but when I go to the 'configure static ip' option, it says it's not available on my account!!

Thinking about it, I seem to recall seeing something like this a while ago but cant find it....

Is this the link that which you seek? https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Static-IP-address-has-gone-from-my-account/td-p/1669092

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

Gandalf — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 15:05:50 GMT

Thanks for getting back to us @russells9

I've just added a temporary static IP for you free of charge to try to get to the bottom of this issue for you.

Could you reboot your router when you next get a chance and let us know how the VPN'ing goes after?

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

russells9 — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 18:06:47 GMT

Hi Gandalf

Thanks for the help, it has seemed to work fine. Logged in first time into work stuff. 😀

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

Gandalf — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 18:27:51 GMT

Thanks for the confirmation @russells9

Excellent that's good to see! I've discussed this with a colleague and I'm leaving the static IP on for you free of charge.

Let us know if there's anything else you'd need help with.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

russells9 — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 18:32:50 GMT

Thanks, much appreciated.

You've really helped me.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

Gandalf — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 18:47:48 GMT

Not a problem. Always happy to help in any way we can.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

bobpullen — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 12:29:58 GMT

@Gandalf wrote
...I believe that the Cisco AnyConnect doesn't play well with certain dynamic IP ranges (I could be wrong though)

Just to pipe in and add some clarity here. Cisco AnyConnect is a dumb client. It has no bearing on your ability to connect to a VPN using a Plusnet connection. In fact, our very own corporate VPN is dependent on AnyConnect, and there are zero issues connecting to that from any of our dynamic IP ranges.

What is of relevance is:-

Whether or not there is a clear routing path between the client and the VPN endpoint. If the routing is broken, traffic cannot get to the endpoint to establish the tunnel.
How the endpoint treats the traffic once it gets to it i.e. does it consider certain IP ranges to be outside of the UK and refuse connection attempts?

In order to establish which of the above we're looking at, the first port of call is normally to ask the administrator of the VPN endpoint to check their logs and confirm:-

Whether or not traffic from your IP address is hitting their server.
Assuming it is, what else do the logs contain?

It can also sometimes help to provide a (preferably UDP) traceroute to the IP address of the VPN endpoint from the Plusnet connection.

Re: Working from home, cannot connect to internet

matthew01 — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 14:17:24 GMT

In my opinion you go with those VPNs which is compatible with multiple devices and router's might be your issue was resolved.
https://www.topvpnservice.com/blog/best-vpn-multiple-devices/