VPN Issues - Employer Blames Fios
wildcat07
Enthusiast - Level 2

I have been working from home since March and had no issue connecting to our work VPN (which allows network file access but does not divert other Internet traffic through it).  The last two weeks, however, I am able to connect to the VPN but I get an error the network path was not found when I try to access files.  It often takes multiple re-connections or a reboot to resolve.  IT says it is not an issue on their end and said to reboot all my equipment.  I did and it worked for a few days before the problem returned.

I have a few other co-workers who have this issue.  The commonality is we all have high speed Fios connections with the fiber optic brought into the home into that compact ONT device (I just upgraded in September).  I tried changing the DNS (as someone here said worked for them) but I just had the issue again.  Any other suggestions?

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Cang_Household
Community Leader
Community Leader

For SSL VPN, G1100 should not be the problem. For the company's ITs, they should know AnyConnect is really kind of connecting from anywhere.

On what basis is your employer blaming FiOS?

What is your company's filesystem? Windows Server? What device are you using to access? A windows computer?

Are you getting any errors in the Windows Event Log? On your company's side, what log entries are they getting? Are they using a VPN router, like ASA, RV345, or ISR? They can check the VPN log to see what's going on. If they have received a packet from your WAN IP, that means FiOS is NOT causing the issue. As ITs, they should know that and find reasons in their logs.

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Cang_Household
Community Leader
Community Leader

The DNS resides at the 7th layer of the OSI model, so unless you and your company configured split-DNS, it is irrelevant to your situation. VPN typically operates at layers 2 and 3. From your description, it seems that your company configured split-tunnel though. That might be relevant to your VPN issue.

The ONT is a layer 2 device that converts light to digital signals, and vice versa. It is tangentially, if not at all, related to your situation.

What does matter is what protocol are you and your company using to establish the connection? Is it PPTP, L2TP, IPsec/IKEv1/2, SSL, or others? What software are you using to establish the connection? What hardware/software does your company use? If you do not know, please consult your IT department.

What router do you use? G3100 or G1100? What is the firmware version?

wildcat07
Enthusiast - Level 2

According to my IT, we use IPSEC and SSL.  The software to connect is Cisco AnyConnect.

The router is a G1100 with firmware version 02.03.00.04

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lasagna
Community Leader
Community Leader

With AnyConnect, you should be use DTLS, but whatever.

If your VPN is up and running (Connected), the problem is your IT department's not FiOS.  Once the VPN is up -- unless they have split tunneling enabled (which any security person would be glad to discuss with them why that should never be the case), any connectivity into the corporate network services is entirely on them.

You don't say what you are getting a network path error on -- is it an internal company resource?  If so, then it IS there problem.

Network path can mean lots of things, but typically, it means the underlying name resolution for whatever you're trying to access can't locate the IP address of the server in question.   Try pinging it from a command window and see if your system knows the ip address once connected.  

Are you using a fully qualified hostname when connecting?   Could be that your DNS suffix search list doesn't include you corporate domain name and so it's not resolving a short name correctly.   You could add that to your configuration in your network settings.

It could also be an anyconnect configuration issue -- they may not be pushing the corporate DNS server IP address information down to the client upon connection.

wildcat07
Enthusiast - Level 2

The network path issue is trying to access folders on the company's network.

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Cang_Household
Community Leader
Community Leader

For SSL VPN, G1100 should not be the problem. For the company's ITs, they should know AnyConnect is really kind of connecting from anywhere.

On what basis is your employer blaming FiOS?

What is your company's filesystem? Windows Server? What device are you using to access? A windows computer?

Are you getting any errors in the Windows Event Log? On your company's side, what log entries are they getting? Are they using a VPN router, like ASA, RV345, or ISR? They can check the VPN log to see what's going on. If they have received a packet from your WAN IP, that means FiOS is NOT causing the issue. As ITs, they should know that and find reasons in their logs.