Establishing a VPN connection takes my default route over.

[Jean-François Lacrampe]

Hello,

I'm connecting to my work VPN network through Mac OS X's native VPN
client (right now on Panther 7B68, but I was told by coworkers that
this behavior is the same on Jaguar).

It works quite well, but when I'm connected to the VPN (PPTP), I can't
access my home network (and the Internet). For some reason, the VPN
connexion sets itself as the default route.

OS X's normal behavior, if I'm not mistaken, is that routing
priorities are set according to the place of the ports in System
Prefs/Network/Show: Network port configuration. Airport is placed
first and VPN is placed last. Airport should stay the default route
even when I establish a VPN connection.

The only way I have found to fix this problem is ugly: I establish a
VPN connexion, lose my LAN & Internet connexion, open a root terminal
where I type:

route delete default
route add default 192.168.0.127 (my local gateway)
route add 10. 10.0.10.248 (the gateway on the VPN side)

and everything is back to normal.

This solution is ugly, because 1. I lose my LAN & Internet connexion
for a few seconds every time and 2. I must know my gateway (if I
connect from a place I'm not used, I don't know it).

Sure, I can write an AppleScript that does most of the work for me,
but that's a less-than-perfect solution.

Is there any way to to it better?

Thanks,
JFL

[Sak Wathanasin]

In article <6ff02a67.0309191719.1c6bc982@posting.google.com >,
[email]jflac2000@hotmail.com[/email] (Jean-François Lacrampe) wrote:

> The only way I have found to fix this problem is ugly: I establish a
> VPN connexion, lose my LAN & Internet connexion, open a root terminal
> where I type:
>
> route delete default
> route add default 192.168.0.127 (my local gateway)
> route add 10. 10.0.10.248 (the gateway on the VPN side)

route change default 192.168.0.127

saves you 1 line of typing

> This solution is ugly, because 1. I lose my LAN & Internet connexion
> for a few seconds every time

It does? Your Internet connection will be routed through the VPN - it's
slower, but it should still work.

> and 2. I must know my gateway (if I
> connect from a place I'm not used, I don't know it).

netstat -nr

before you establish the PPTP tunnel will show you the existing routes. The
PPTP implementation in OSX is very lame.

> Is there any way to to it better?

Buy a copy of DigiTunnel; much better but even W95 can do better than this
(allows more than 1 concurrent tunnel, for example).

--

Sak Wathanasin
Network Analysis Limited
[url]http://www.network-analysis.ltd.uk[/url]

[Mike Cohen]

I use DigiTunnel ([url]http://www.gracion.com/vpn/[/url]), which doesn't set
the default route.

--
Mike Cohen - mike3k <at> onepost <dot> net
Personal: [url]http://www.mc-development.com/[/url]
Mac News: [url]http://www.macmegasite.com/[/url]

[Bob Harris]

In article <6ff02a67.0309191719.1c6bc982@posting.google.com >,
[email]jflac2000@hotmail.com[/email] (Jean-François Lacrampe) wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm connecting to my work VPN network through Mac OS X's native VPN
> client (right now on Panther 7B68, but I was told by coworkers that
> this behavior is the same on Jaguar).
>
> It works quite well, but when I'm connected to the VPN (PPTP), I can't
> access my home network (and the Internet). For some reason, the VPN
> connexion sets itself as the default route.
>
> OS X's normal behavior, if I'm not mistaken, is that routing
> priorities are set according to the place of the ports in System
> Prefs/Network/Show: Network port configuration. Airport is placed
> first and VPN is placed last. Airport should stay the default route
> even when I establish a VPN connection.
>
> The only way I have found to fix this problem is ugly: I establish a
> VPN connexion, lose my LAN & Internet connexion, open a root terminal
> where I type:
>
> route delete default
> route add default 192.168.0.127 (my local gateway)
> route add 10. 10.0.10.248 (the gateway on the VPN side)
>
> and everything is back to normal.
>
> This solution is ugly, because 1. I lose my LAN & Internet connexion
> for a few seconds every time and 2. I must know my gateway (if I
> connect from a place I'm not used, I don't know it).
>
> Sure, I can write an AppleScript that does most of the work for me,
> but that's a less-than-perfect solution.
>
> Is there any way to to it better?
>
> Thanks,
> JFL

There are several tips on PPTP connections and ways to try and deal with
the default route issue at <www.macosxhints.com>. The most recent was
<[url]http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030906232648318&query=Avo[/url]
id+creating+PPTP+default+routes>

Bob Harris