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Eelseyes · Aug 4, 2004, 09:34 AM

Hello everyone,

I've been trying to get my Mac to connect to my employer's Cisco VPN via Airport. I currently have an older Airport card in my laptop (802.11b)--not an Extreme card (although I expect to have a new PB with an AEx sometime this fall.) Here's the deal: I can ONLY get a connection to the VPN via a hard-line Ethernet cable. When I try to use my Airport, it's no joy.

My network gurus tell me that Airport won't work with Cisco VPN systems. Linksys routers on Windows systems, they say, are the only wireless solutions. But they're all Windows guys, anyway, so I thought I should check among those who understand the true path in the digital wilderness instead...

By the way, I did look in Apple's KB and I found nothing conclusive.
Any thoughts?

Eelseyes

necromactastic · Aug 5, 2004, 07:37 PM

Try this: http://www.wireless.ubc.ca/vpn/macvpn.html

Kristoff · Aug 5, 2004, 08:11 PM

Your network Gurus are network challenged. For them to say that means they know little about OSI, TCP/IP, IPSEC, favoring windows and wizards.

I have used Cisco VPN through my airport (graphite) and my pismo 500 for as long as there have been Cisco VPN clients for OS X.

Is the VPN switch a 3000 or 5000 series?
Which client version do you have?
Look in the system log, see any vpn kext errors?

I recall on old versions of the 5000 series client, you had to tell it which nic you wanted it to bind to en0 being the 802.3 and en1 being the 802.11b interfaces respectively.

It will work, just give us as much info as you can. And tell your network people to get a clue.

Some Guy [] · Aug 6, 2004, 05:51 AM

works just fine on airpots (non-extreme)... the only time there could be a problem would be if multiple people using the same airport basestation tried to vpn using ipsec.

-justin

Eelseyes · Aug 6, 2004, 07:41 AM

Thanks everyone.

Necromactastic--excellent site you pointed me to. (Others might want to take a look.) This evening, when I'm home and thus outside of my workplace network, I'm going to try to re-config using the instructions it outlines.

Kristoff--
Regarding the question posed about what kind of Cisco switch I'm connected to, I'm looking in to it. But tell me: when you say that I should look in my System Log to see if there are any VPN kext errors I'm not sure where that log is found. (My kung fu is not quite that good yet...but I'm coming up fast...) I looked in my OSX System Folder, then dug through my Library, but I'm not sure where precisely I should be. Care to point an eager kohai in the right direction?

Regardless of this outcome, it's safe to say that my network admins--responsible though they may be for a large, publically funded campus of more than 10,000 people (really!)--are a little slow on more than one topic. Pleasant folks, to be sure, but far from Elite Hacker Decoder Ring status. Ho-hum... I persevere...

Thanks for the help everyone.

Eelseyes

Kristoff · Aug 6, 2004, 01:41 PM

launch Console.app and look in the console log and the system log (they are menu items, so you don't really need to know the full path)

Some Guy [] · Aug 8, 2004, 08:25 AM

oh ya, are you using the latest cisco vpn client? and you're running panther?

-justin

jasong · Aug 8, 2004, 10:02 AM

Also, make sure you are using the latest version of the Airport firmware and software. I used to have the same problem as you, couldn't connect to my company Netopia VPN using the built-in PPTP client over airport (wired connection worked fine).

One of the airport updates took care of it (I am guessing it was 3.1, but I don't remember).

-- Jason