VPN Problem

Hi everyone

I am running openSuse 11.4 on a laptop. (I just realized that I should update to 12.1). The wlan connection is working fine at home in every private network.
Now when I am using a vpn connection (Cisco AnyConnect Client) at my university it works fine, I can connect to the network, but after that I can’t connect to any private network anymore (in fact I can connect to the network and ping the router but I can’t reach the internet or any dns server).

It seams that the vpn connection is changing the configuration of the dhcp client somewhere but I can’t figure it out. I am quite new to linux and I don’t know very much about network configuration in linux.

Thank you for every answer. (If I didn’t gave enough information please tell me)

No you “shouldn’t” and if you have this false impression that gives a very bad impression of what we do here in this forum. Upgrade is NOT a must, security updates and safe user behavior yes. The fact that you use 11.4 is perfectly legitimate and justifiable. It is a supported version.

The wlan connection is working fine at home in every private network.
Now when I am using a vpn connection (Cisco AnyConnect Client) at my university it works fine, I can connect to the network, but after that I can’t connect to any private network anymore (in fact I can connect to the network and ping the router but I can’t reach the internet or any dns server).

It seams that the vpn connection is changing the configuration of the dhcp client somewhere but I can’t figure it out. I am quite new to linux and I don’t know very much about network configuration in linux.

The VPN as far as I recall has the necessity to change the default route. I have substantial problems with VPN by myself, but you should at least post two things in order to make it easier to help:
Open a terminal and post the output of


su -
ifconfig
route

Copy and paste the result here in “code” tags and then do

exit

of the root session.
The first will give you the asset of your network hardware. The second will give you the current situation of routing of your system.
With this it should be easier to understand what the problem is, so some more knowledgeable person can give you better assistance.

thank you, I already thought about that.

I have to add that I am using the vpn at the university to connect to the internet, because the secure wireless network isn’t working very well using linux, I am using the public network of the university and then I use the vpn connection to connect to the internet.

Because I am not at the university now a cannot give you the route table which was set up after the connection to the public network. And I don’t know if a have the same problem if I only use the vpn from my home to connect to the universitys intranet.

What is also needed as information is the following:

  • what client do you try to use to connect via the public network (openVPN, openSWAN or PPTP)?
  • did you already setup a VPN with this client in another setting before and did it work?
  • what program are you using to connect with the VPN: networkmanager, kvpnc, command-line, other?
    Do also a short “googling” whether there might be incompatibilities with the Cisco Client and your VPN client.

The thing is a already set up a vpn connection in the public network (as described before) and it worked fine. My problem is that after this connection I couldn’t connect to any private network anymore. The vpn client I use is Cisco AnyConnect and it is proposed and distributed by the university.

If you are not part of the personnel and have no clearance to connect from outside to the intra-net of the University this may well be a wanted behavior. If you wish to use from an outside hotspot the Internet with VPN you should consider the subscription to a VPN service offering access with openVPN, like SwissVPN or others. You can do an inquiry at the university IT department whether Internet access is granted while connecting from a hot-spot outside of the university network. Chances are good that this is forbidden for security reasons and that you need a special setup (generally reserved to employees and not accessible to students).

Thank you I know all that. I am student and I have a access to the network of the university, the thing is that the WPA network of the university isn’t working very well with linux, so I have to connect to the public hotspot of the university and using the vpn-client (connected to the university vpn-server) I am able to access the internet. this is working but after that the configuration of my system seems to be changed in a way that I can connect myself to a private network (and ping the router) but something with the dhcp isn’t working so I cannot access the internet.

Thank you for your help.