VPN and Telewest Blueyonder

[jk1]

Hi, does anyone know if Blueyonder have made any changes to stop VPN access ? I know at least one ISP that doesn't allow it via domestic broadband connections. Understandable I suppose if you're only paying domestic prices and not business prices to work from home ! Just wondered if Telewest have realised this too and have put a stop to this type of connection.
I've been happily connecting to my works VPN for the last few months via my telewest cable modem. Now all of a sudden, I connect, then get disconnected immediately. No changes have been made at work, and no changes on my laptop.
I've connected my laptop onto other ISPs and it works fine. It just seems to be Telewest.

Many thanks in advance for any help on this one.

[dj_johnnyg]

My mother has Blueyonder Broadband and I can happily connect to my work using VPN.

I use Cisco software with a secureID tag

[Cable Monkey]

Blueyonder has no problem with VPN access and I believe they market it as a working tool in conjunction with their product.

[jk1]

Thanks for the replies.

I understood Telewest say VPN works but I didn't think they supported it if there were any problems. Maybe I'll try calling them and see if they'll upgrade my cable modem ( it's a Webstar EPC2100 ).

Out of interest, do you guys use just the cable modem or a cable router too ?

[danburbridge]

It works fine - I regularly use it to connect to my work network.

The problem is most likely at the head-end (your work) or that your connection is dropping out and causing the VPN to drop out.

Are you using WIFI? - if so try with a cable.

Get your IT dept to check that your connections are reaching their VPN concentrator (they should be able to see it in its logs)

Don't bother phoning Telewest - you will only confuse them and then they will send an engineer out to replace your modem and charge you 50 quid for the priveledge.

[jk1]

Hi, I work in our IT Dept ! :-D I've already checked the log file and the connection is being made and an IP address allocated to my laptop but then it disconnects immediately.
The problem cannot be at work or on my laptop cos as stated in my original post I have connected my laptop up to a couple of friends BT Broadband connections and it works fine.
Telewest have told me there's no problem with their network and no-one else has reported problems to them ( not that they'd be likely to tell me anyway ). I'm waiting on Telewest now to see if they will agree to change my cable modem as that seems to be the only answer. If they don't agree to it I'll have no option but to cancel my contract with them and move to BT.

[danburbridge]

have you checked the logs on the server side as well?

Both for the actual connection and then for the authentication (presuming that you use a seperate authentication server -radius or the like)

I know our IAS server has detailed logs of why the connection has been dropped (because users password has expired/doesn't have dial in perms etc etc)

Do you have a router or are you just connecting straight to the modem?
If you have a router then it may be blocking the requests back from the VPN concentrator to negiotate the security policies.

I did have one very odd case where a users VPN connection was being blocked by our firewall when he tried to connect it was connecting on an incorrect port - even when we specified the port it was still connecting on the same one....

Reinstalling the vpn software didn't fix it originally and it wasn't until we installed a later version of the software that it started working.

[jk1]

I've borrowed a router and it works with that connected. Still don't know why it suddenly stopped working with the modem only. Looks like I'll have to buy a router then !

[ldoodle]

Originally Posted by jk1

I've borrowed a router and it works with that connected. Still don't know why it suddenly stopped working with the modem only. Looks like I'll have to buy a router then !

Get yourself a Draytek router... you can then connect your home network to your work network via LAN-LAN VPN, which means you won't have to worry about dialing in when you want access. You can then do away with any port forwarding rules you may have for RDP etc.