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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."
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
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?
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.