Thursday, September 15, 2005

WRV54G VPN Router tips

Update 9.29.05 - We now have this WRV54G VPN router up and running. The current firmware version (2.37 12.02.2004) allows you to set up a tunnel and connect via VPN client without disturbing either one. People were also complaining, saying they couldn't get it to work with the RV042 VPN Router. We tested this one with the WRV54G router and were able to get it working also. So, Linksys, Cisco... whoever have done a lot of work to make these compatible with each other. Based on our current experience, I would give this router an "Exceeds Expectations" for the small-business customer.

Tech Notes for the day:

Wow, having problems setting up a Linksys WRV54G with a tunnel. Unfortunately found the thread too late in the day to continue with setup tonight. From a pretty cool robustness stage, one of the routers had the web server lock up, but was still allowing VPN access to the network and then connectivity to the servers. Guess tomorrow or Friday will be the days when we try the following tips:

TIP 1: For Linksys QuickVPN usage:

or Linksys Quickvpn Client to WRV54G Connection, do the following:

1) Disable PPTP, L2TP, and IPSEC Passthru
2 Disable VPN Gateway, VPN Tunnels, Key Management, Encryption, Authentication, and PFS Shared Key
3) Until you're able to connect with quickvpn, disable ports 1723, 500, 443, and 4500; these settings "might" disrupt communication between the client and the WRV54g

Quickvpn will make its own secure tunnel with the WRV54g "without" all the following things I just mentioned that you need to disable. The above configuration is what you would do "if" you're WRV54G is acting as an "endpoint" and people are using quickvpn to connect "to" your router. As the VPN termination point, "you" do not need to enable the services in items #1 and #2; if "you" were a quickvpn user who needed to connect "to" a WRV54G vpn router, then "you" would enable pptp, L2tp, and IPSEC Pass-thru on "your" router.
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Now, if you want to connect your vpn router to another vpn router, then you would have to open up a tunnel between your router and the other vpn router and slowly start opening "ports" (i.e. 1723 etc...) one by one as a means of process of elimination:

Tunnel: Enabled
Gateway: Disabled

Tunnel Name: Linksys

Local Sec. Grp (Your Lan): 192.168.1.10
255.255.255.0

Remote Sec. Grp (Other Lan) 192.168.2.10
255.255.255.0

Remote Sec. Gtwy (Other Lan's Wan IP) 24.255.34.154

Encryption: 3DES (Suggested)
Authentication: Sha1 (Suggested)

Key Management: Auto(IKE)

PFS: Enabled

Pre-Shared Key: (Enter a password)

Key Lifetime: 3600 (Suggested)

Make sure your settings in the Advanced VPN Configuration Tunnel are similar...


TIP 2: Really an extension of TIP 1:

Internet connection type: Automatic Configuration - DHCP
MTU: Manual
MTU Size: 1500 (1500 is the Max)

Setting my MTU to manual and to 1500 stabilized "ALOT" of the problems I was having. Doing this cut down on 98% of the rebooting. You don't have to have the router itself set to a static ip; just make sure your clients are connecting via static ip if they are behind a router on another land or with a WAN ip if connected directly to a cable modem (dhcp might also work). FYI, I got a dynamic ip address "FOR FREE" from www.webreactor.net. I was up and running my ftp server in under 30 mins. I tried setting my wrv54g up with a static setting, but it had a tendency to lose it's WAN connectivity every couple of days in that configuration. So, I leave it set for DHCP (in case the ip happens to change) and I have no problems in that respect anymore.

Make sure the DHCP server feature is enabled so your vpn clients can pull an IP address once they connect. Additionally, make sure all vpn clients connection to your router have a static ip address. Let's try it from this angle and see what happens...

As stated before, the quickvpn client will create its own tunnel with the wrv54g, so don't bother with the directions linksys put out; that appears to be for people using 2000 server.

For those of you who've just joined onto this thread, my WRV54G is running "while utilizing the linksys quickvpn client" with all the settings mentioned in my posts. Prior to getting Linksys to send me beta firmware 2.36.5, I was able to connect via vpn with firmware 2.36.

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