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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
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.
2 E16833124190
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
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.
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?
Nortel Contivity client has long sucked, and most people use older versions that don't support UDP encapsulation and NAT Traversal. Getting TCP IPsec to work is an issue not just with the Airport, but with many firewalls. Try connecting a Nortel Contivity client from behind a PIX/ASA/IOS CBAC, or Netscreen for that matter (with default settings). Stateful filtering and NAT will break the VPN.