Work IPSec VPN not working

[#1]

Hi All,

Hoping somebody can help, I've tried calling Plusnet tech support and they advised me they can't help as it's a VPN problem.

I've recently found that I'm unable to connect to my work VPN (Watchguard IPSec) and noticed a few other posts with similar issues. I've checked and my IP address falls in the 146.x.x.x range that people have previously highlighted as being an issue. It works fine from a tethered connection and from other locations but not from my home network. I've got a Plusnet Hub and nothing has been modifed on the hub aside from obviously password changes.

Does anyone have any advice how I can proceed please? For reference here are the similar issues I found raised prior, seems like it's quite a common issue.

https://community.plus.net/t5/Everything-else/VPN-not-working/td-p/1555802

https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/VPN-no-longer-working/td-p/1345840

Obviously it's quite difficult to work from home without access to the company resources! Any guidance/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

James

[#2]

@Dingolicious 

Given what you've said above, no idea if escalation will help, but hope someone will reply on this.

This topic has been escalated by one of the Superusers; please allow time for Plusnet to respond before commenting further.

Escalation does not imply progressing this matter will be given priority, nor that a different outcome will result.

Reason for escalation:  Request response

 .

[#3]

Would be worth verifying with your employer whether or not they have any geo-ip restrictions in place on their VPN endpoint. If they do, there's a chance they're incorrectly seeing your connection attempts as coming from the States. If that is the case then we can happily share the ranges of the IP's in the 146.x.x.x range that are ours (and exclusively used within the UK).

[#4]

@Dingolicious  you could also check that your local LAN subnet ( default is 192.168.1.0 ) is not the same as your office local subnet, as that will prevent the VPN from routing traffic.

[#5]

Thanks for your replies all, appreciate your help!

@MisterW The LAN subnets are both different (192.168.1.0 and 10.0.0.0)

@bobpullen No geo-IP restrictions on the VPN at work

The plot thickens

Thanks

James

[#6]

@Dingolicious  clutching at straws here but if you have a PN Hub One have you tried enabling 'port clamping' ?

It's under Advanced settings->Broadband->VPN 

The LAN subnets are both different (192.168.1.0 and 10.0.0.0)

Thinking about that, the 10.0.0.0 is a known problem with BT Hubs since they reserve it for BT Wifi. Whilst the PN Hub one is a HH5 clone it has different firmware but how different I'm not sure. @bobpullen will know, does the PN Hub one still have any restriction on the 10.0.0.0 subnets ?

[#7]

Hi @MisterW 

Sadly my hub isn't a PN Hub One, it's one of the older ones I think so I don't have the option for Port Clamping available. I don't suppose this is the kind of thing Plusnet would send a new hub out for is it?

Interesting to hear about 10.x restrictions, would be an interesting development if this was the case!

Cheers

James

[#8]

Hi All,

My issues have now been resolved. After all the different things in the end it happened to be an old version of the VPN client not working correctly for some reason (Whether it be compatibility with Win10 or something, I'm not sure), after using a newly released version it connects just fine.

Thanks for all your help guys.

Cheers

James

[#9]

Thanks for letting us know, @Dingolicious! 

Give us a shout if you ever need more assistance.

Kind Regards, 

MoR