VPN blues
Sometimes I just have to laugh.
I work for an ISP these days, and sometimes I get puzzling problems thrown in my lap.
Like the guy who couldn’t send e-mail through our servers. He couldn’t understand it, because he was hooked up to our net, and there was absolutely no reason he shouldn’t be able to send e-mail.
Then there’s the guy who threw a fit because our network blocked a racy site. Or so he thought.
Problem is, both of them were connected to a VPN (Virtual Private Network).
Many companies provide their employees with VPN connections to minimize the chance that their traffic could be sniffed and misused, because a VPN connection is encrypted. When you’re connected to a VPN, your IP address becomes that of the VPN connection. And your company may have installed filters, maybe even proxy servers for that connection. So you may not be able to reach everything. An ISP generally doesn’t filter your net access, but companies can usually get away with any kind of filtering they like. It’s not like their employees will leave over that…
Consequently, when these employees are unaware that they’re still connected to the VPN, then unexpected things could happen…
So next time unexpected things happen with your net connetion, check to see that you’re not hooked up to your VPN connection…
April 5th, 2006 at 9:08 am
We have similar clients who are always complaining of no connection and then went informed to check their VPN look a little red faced!
April 6th, 2006 at 8:31 am
I can top that - I spent a while with a new laptop trying to work out why I couldn’t telnet on port 25 to our mail server, which I _knew_ was up and accepting connections. Turns out McAfee Virus Scan has a ‘helpful’ setting (on by default!) which blocks outbound SMTP connections… This feature is installed even if you don’t install the McAfee desktop firewall!