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VPN Issues With New Airport Extreme 802.11n
An anonymous reader writes "The new Airport Extremes are shipping and some users are reporting problems with certain types of VPN connectivity. There is a work-around posted in Apple's support forums, but the solution is less than ideal. These issues were not experienced in Apple's earlier Airport Extreme, and users are calling for Apple to fix the issue. Some have even taken their unit back to Apple until a fix is created."
Okay, a brand-new, just-released product has a bug. Why is this on Slashdot?
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Although I use Linux, and OS X, I am not a fan of the Airport Extreme. It has a somewhat limited ability in its configurations. I like the Dial-up feature it has that is not common amoung wifi routers for those without broadband. Although it is not my 1st choice of router.
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I personally use a Linksys WRT54GL flashed with DD-WRT. They are a complete solution for work environments, and good for home as well. I can get them for $65 a pop, and resell them for $100, and not charge installation. Since they run Linux, you can do almost anything with it. DD-WRT gives it the same, or similar abilities of a $600 router. You can have a hardware VPN solution in the unit as well. The WRT54GL has 16mb ram, and 4mb flash, along with a 200mhz broadcom processor. Its a nice little box. It is a complete solution in most of the networking jobs I do.
WRT54GL: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N8
DD-WRT: http://www.dd-wrt.com/
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. - Jefferson
This isn't windows. OSX is a reasonably secure OS, and it works fine without having to hide behind some shitty, ineffective firewall. I have over 200 OSX boxes with public IPs, and I'm not particularly worried about them.
The internet, in general, works better when you have a real connection.
It seems that every complaint in that thread is regarding Nortel's Contivity VPN system.
As someone whose employer uses Contivity, I can say that without a doubt, Contivity *sucks*. It is in theory an IPSec implementation, but it is a massively mangled one that suffers from endless problems, especially with NAT. Numerous coworkers of mine have had problems with Contivity and a wide variety of routers from various manufacturers. About the only router that seems to work well with Contivity is one running DD-WRT. For some reason, DD-WRT Just Works.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"The issue seems to be that, without setting your computer as the DMZ in the base station settings, you can't establish a VPN connection with an external VPN server from your computer."
No, the issue is that without this workaround, you can't connect one specific VPN client (Nortel Contivity) to an external VPN server. All of the problem reports except for one are with Nortel Contivity, a VPN client which is notorious for being finicky as far as working with NAT routers. Trust me, we use it where I work and it breaks with a LARGE variety of routers from various manufacturers.
I know nothing about this Checkpoint client, but it is probably similar to Contivity (In theory, an IPSec implementation, but one that is so badly mangled that it won't speak to any other IPSec implementation other than the one it was specifically designed with. That mangling seems to be related to its tendency to not work well with many NAT routers.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I use OpenVPN a lot, but only for site-to-site configurations. For roadwarriors, i recommend PPTP.
Why?
Both OS X and Windows (from 2000) have a native PPTP client. PPTP uses GRE, so it doesn't work with routers that don't support VPN Passthrough, but nearly 99% do. The ease of deployment of PPTP is massive - OpenVPN requires a lot more work, and isn't as nicely integrated into the OS as PPTP on both OS X and Windows.
For the server side, you can create a PPTP server on almost everything. I usually use Linux boxes with authentication against active directory. But Windows Server can also play PPTP servers, which is especially nice in Small Business Environments.
But when 2 Linux Boxes are involved, OpenVPN is king. It can even get through the most restrictive firewalls, which can be kinda nice. And it works flawlessly. I use it to connect branch offices or for remote maintenance for key customers.
OK, first, it doesn't look like anyone from Apple has recommended that everyone using Nortel VPN clients simply set a default host and be done with it. This is a user discussion. Maybe some of those people are Apple employees, but I didn't notice anything telling me that they were. Second, the more appropriate solution would probably a be a port trigger, which the new base station supports. I don't use Nortel VPN, and my Cisco VPN is working fine with my new Extreme, but this thread seems to imply that a simple port trigger fixed the exact same issue for Linksys users. Hopefully that will help.
Actually, in my experience, setting up a PPTP server was a complete and total pain in the ass. I had tried PoPToP on my Linux server (didn't know of any other solutions at the time, and wasn't going to Windows for my server), but I got frustrated as all hell trying to get it working. Even when I thought I got it working, I could never get the clients to connect properly. On the other hand, I had very few problems setting up OpenVPN as a server once I read through the HOWTO on their site thoroughly. I've set up two different OpenVPN server setups, one bridged and one routed, and both work fine with a minimum of hassle.
As far as "nicely integrating with the OS", well, if you want an easy OpenVPN client solution, pick up OpenVPN-GUI for Windows or Tunnelblick for OS X. They're GUI frontends for OpenVPN that, once you get the config and key files into the configuration directories, connect/disconnect with a couple of mouse-clicks. I use both extensively to connect to my home network, and never have had an issue.
Just my $.02...
And more problems; OpenVPN and u:pw authentication against Active Directory doesn't seem to be easily possible.
You're using a newer Contivity client, and your organization has enabled NAT-T on their Nortel endpoint.
A lot of larger corporations use the older client -- Contivity 3.x which doesn't support NAT-T, or they choose to not enable NAT-T on the gateway. This is the case with a lot of Fortune 100 companies.