VPN

Good Morning...

I'm sorry if this has been asked/answered already -- I didn't see any previous discussions for this issue and at this point, I am really close to ripping out what little hair I have left now...

I've got M0n0wall 1.235 running on a Neoware mini-pc serving up a 6MB Internet connection for a smal office (5 Users). For this task, I've got no complaints.. From the beginning, we've had 1 user connecting in occasionally via the PPTP function and again, no complaints here. My problems started when more than 1 user began connecting via VPN.

When 3 of our users began working from home, I started receiving complaints that the VPN "wasn't working". I investigated those connections and indeed, sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn't. The log files didn't give up any information. One evening I attempted to sign on while someone else was already in the VPN and there I found it -- only 1 person could be in the VPN at once. If they disconnected, I could wait approximately 15 seconds (not sure what this is about) and then I could connect. But again, once 1 person had started a VPN session, no one else could join until they released.

I tried this in multiple scenarios, different PC's, different internet connections and still, no luck. I still cannot get more than 1 user logged in at once.

Any thoughts?

What kind of authentication is used? PSK or RSA signatures?

Does each user, for example in case of PSK have unique ID and pre-shared secret?

He is using PPTP VPN.

I suspect the problem lies in how the internet connection is set up.  Does the Mono box have the external IP address or do you have a seperate router/Modem somewhere.  It is probably to do with the setting up of a GRE tunnel through some other device and NAT being in the way.

Good Morning...

Yes, this is a PPTP VPN and no, it's not being NAT'd/GRE'd at all... The m0n0wall is connected directly to the ISP, the WAN interface has a public IP address -- commercial 6MB/1MB ethernet service. Unless the ISP is doing something funky, we should have a clean pipe.

Clients are using the Microsoft Windows VPN client implementation.

I am beginning to wonder if the mini-pc is just running out of resources. For the first troubleshooting step, I think I'm going to put together a test system using a 1.3b16 CD and a old desktop and see if the problem goes away.

Thanks!

Good Evening...

A few days later and.... we have success!

It seems that a hardware upgrade (to an old P3) and a software upgrade (to 1.3B16) was all that was needed to fix the single vpn user problem. I've got 3 clients connected right now without issue...

I wish I could give a better breakdown as to exactly where the problem was fixed -- new hardware or new version of the OS -- but, its working!

Thanks everyone...