Experiences with Client Access Express over DSL/VPN?

[CrabSlabber]

A few thoughts I thought might help. Have you tried changing your vpn client? Using the MS Windows vpn client you might have better luck. Windows 98 doesn't allow for much in the way of security, but you can do ipsec and l2tp with windows XP. Secondly check the MTU on the SecureRemote client, for pppoe it should be 1200. Make sure that you do no have the SecureRemote start up automatically on boot up. Start it manually only after your pppoe connection is made. Finally make sure you are on the latest version on the vpn client software and that your vpn appliance is at it's latest software build.

[dbrunner@co.kenosha.wi.us]

Ken, Here's a solution found in the following link group. Search the group for "MTU" and there are posts that describe how to test and change your MTU PC settings. The nutshell is that your PC is transmitting 1500, and your iSeries only likes 1492. All of your packets get fragmented, and for some reason, DSL and VPN get confused. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=d...ibm.as400.misc We had the same problem with our VPN over DSL. We lowered the MaxMTU on the client PC's as reccomended by our VPN supplier, Symantec. Fixed the problem completely. This is from the Symantec Knowledgebase (BTW, we don't use PPPoE, but still had the problem):

[Guest.Visitor]

Thank you for your suggestions. As it turns out, I was able to find the MTU solution during my researches. Everything works well now except PC5250 sessions; if left alone, they time out somehow after a few minutes. I've tried CHGTELNA TIMMRKTIMO(0) (normally *CALC) and CHGTCPA TCPKEEPALV(120) (normally 5) but that doesn't seem to help. I'm not using SSL, and Auto-Reconnect is not checked. I've seen other postings on this problem but no solutions.

[Guest.Visitor]

We have this problem. Our VPN is between Cisco Pix's. IBM claims the problem is with how the VPN is configured.

[Guest.Visitor]

I and some others at my company sometimes connect from home to do system maintenance & such using Client Access Express, PCAnywhere, Outlook, etc. I use my home DSL account and VPN software (SecuRemote from Checkpoint). Until recently, my connection to my ISP (Pacific Bell in Southern California) was PPPoA (Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM) but while making some changes at home (changing from USB to Ethernet modem), switched to PPPoE (over Ethernet). Since then, I've had problems making and sometimes maintaining my connection to work. Can't even ping it when it stops, though the rest of the Net is OK. Then it'll mysteriously start working again later. Our networking guys say that nearly everyone using DSL has had that problem, that it may have to do with packet size, and they haven't been able to do much about it. PC OSes include Win98SE, 2K, XP. Has anyone else run into this? And had any success fixing it? It's not horribly unstable, but can be darn inconvenient or worse if it's at the wrong time.

[Guest.Visitor]

I also tried Mocha's TN5250, www.mochasoft.dk, and it also times out unless you check the "Send Keepalive every 15 seconds" box under Connections, Advanced. Anybody know of a simple/cheap TELNET keepalive program for Windows? That would probably solve my & others' problems. Guess I could go googling for it, and ask IBM to include it as a PC5250 feature....