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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."
From the link; use the "default host" option:
In Airport Utility, double-click on the AEBS. In the popup window, click on Internet. Then click on NAT. Check "Enable default host" and set the IP address to what the AEBS has given to your mac.
The Nortel VPN client then works (at least for me anyway - It didn't work before I tried this).
According to the help for the Airport Utility, "A default host is a computer on your network that is exposed to the Internet and receives all inbound traffic." This obviously doesn't sound like a permanent solution but it is definitely a workaround of sorts.
So one recommendation/workaround is to put the device in the DMZ? That's a horrible workaround. Once your VPN connection is up, if it's smart it will disable any other traffic than destined for that VPN connection (and vice versa) but you're still exposed until you get the tunnel running. And that still doesn't eliminate any buffer/driver exploits...
That's just... ick.
Karnal
People are already asking this. The answer is that the work-around is unacceptable. This is news when it is a Microsoft product. This is news when it's anyone's. Solutions that put users at even further risk is a bad solution.
Here's what I hate, though. Apple sometimes decides not to fix things. It isn't likely to be the case here, but sometimes they just decide not to fix things.