I am a graduate student who has to connect to multiple VPNs to do my work. From the past two weeks, whenever I am on my home network I am unable to do so. My request times out. I thought the problem could be with my laptop settings (which I had not changed), so I went to my friend's house to try it but it worked. The next thing I tried was to get my friend's laptop home and try it on her laptop -- still didn't work. Both the laptops use different operating systems (OSX and Linux). The next question to be answered was if my university was refusing my IP address. To check this I tried connecting to some other university's VPN -- still didn't work. Tried the same thing at my friend's place -- it worked. I also tried using my Mobile data by creating a hotspot and connecting to it with my laptop and things worked.
In short -- two different laptops with two different OS can connect to two different VPNs at my friend's place but not mine. As any sensible person would deduce -- problem with my network. So I called Verizon. After transferring my call 4-5 times and then talking to me for 2 hours, they told me -- "Sorry it is not the problem at our end. Wait for some days for the IP address to be renewed (I do not know what this means), and try again". So as an abiding customer, I waited.
Meanwhile I realised, that my FaceTime and WhatsApp calling also do not work. On WhatsApp, I get an explicit message saying that "Your service provider has blocked the call". Now I start losing my patience. I call again, again to be transferred 5 times after 20 minutes of waiting. This female had no idea what I am talking about. Note that this female is from Verizon's "technical" department. She kept on referring to VPN, WhatsApp and FaceTime as "Websites". I ignored. I explained my problem once again. She checked a few things at her end and told me that everything looked fine and the problem is with my equipment and I should contact Apple (I couldn't say a word for several seconds after listening to this). I described her the experiments that I described above. There can be a problem with my laptop but not with Dell (my friend has Dell) as well. Even my laptop works fine the moment I connect to any other network (my phone's hotspot or my friend's wireless). She refused to listen and told me to contact Apple and Dell both.
She even screen shared my laptop to see what the problem was (which I am sure she didn't understand as she sounded lost after looking at my black terminal where I was trying to make my VPN connection). I also showed the inability to make FaceTime calls. Later she suggested me to uninstall the app and install it again like any amateur would suggest.
I had lost all my cool after those 2 hours long useless conversation but I still requested her to send someone over to check it but she still insisted that I should contact Apple and Dell and ask them for solutions. I just thanked her and kept the phone down.
I have to go to my university even on the weekends to connect to the servers and stay there for late nights to finish my work and then walk back home at 4:00 in the morning which is both scary and unsafe.
What should I do to make Verizon look into the matter.
Solved! Go to Correct Answer
In short -- two different laptops with two different OS can connect to two different VPNs at my friend's place but not mine. As any sensible person would deduce -- problem with my network. So I called Verizon. After transferring my call 4-5 times and then talking to me for 2 hours, they told me -- "Sorry it is not the problem at our end. Wait for some days for the IP address to be renewed (I do not know what this means), and try again". So as an abiding customer, I waited.
Logon to the router admin page and release the router's WAN ip, Power of the router for a few minutes then restart it. This will give you a new IP address, possibly the one you have is blacklisted. This may be your problem so no harm in trying it.
I have had good luck getting problems resolved by using twitter @verizonsupport
A couple of things to try:
1. Wired or wireless? If you're using one, switch to the other to see if the behavior changes. When switching to wired, make sure you disable the radio. When trying wireless, disable the LAN interface in the network settings under control panel (windows) or turn off the interface on a Mac or down the interface on Linux.
2. Disable the firewall on your PC temporarily.
3. Check the setting for the network (windows) to see if you have it set as a "home", "office" or "public" network and correct as apprporiate.
4. Factory reset the router (power cycle it first if you haven't tried that already).
In short -- two different laptops with two different OS can connect to two different VPNs at my friend's place but not mine. As any sensible person would deduce -- problem with my network. So I called Verizon. After transferring my call 4-5 times and then talking to me for 2 hours, they told me -- "Sorry it is not the problem at our end. Wait for some days for the IP address to be renewed (I do not know what this means), and try again". So as an abiding customer, I waited.
Logon to the router admin page and release the router's WAN ip, Power of the router for a few minutes then restart it. This will give you a new IP address, possibly the one you have is blacklisted. This may be your problem so no harm in trying it.
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