[SIMS] Hosted SLG - Anyone else noticing problems with VPN stability?

[pete]

Ours is flaking out every 5 minutes. Checked and restarted all I can at my end and waiting for a callback.

vpn-ctr9.capita-cso.co.uk

And it's report season. Marvellous.

[matt40k]

I'm sure @GREED would agree with me when I say I wouldn't want to comment. Normally it gets blamed on your broadband. Are you on your regional\LA broadband? They should at least be able to give you details on your connection which would rule out it being "your" problem.

[GREED]

I'm sure @GREED would agree with me when I say I wouldn't want to comment. Normally it gets blamed on your broadband. Are you on your regional\LA broadband? They should at least be able to give you details on your connection which would rule out it being "your" problem.

mwahahaha... Indeed I would @matt40k indeed I would. A very professional response too!

I'm not actually laughing though because it is not funny...

[pete]

I'm sure @GREED would agree with me when I say I wouldn't want to comment. Normally it gets blamed on your broadband. Are you on your regional\LA broadband? They should at least be able to give you details on your connection which would rule out it being "your" problem.

I've already done due diligence with the LA security team and asked them to check if there's anything wierd in the US > LA > Capita and they say everything looks groovy - nothing dropped, fragmented or otherwise than it should be.

Let's say I am experienced in pre-empting the finger-pointing checksheet.

[matt40k]

... and they say everything looks groovy

yer baby, yer

Sorry couldn't resist. Did they say if they're having anyone else having problems?

[pete]

yer baby, yer

Sorry couldn't resist. Did they say if they're having anyone else having problems?

LA? No - no generally reported problems anywhere that first line knew about and nothing else generally that security team mentioned (and they're usually pretty good about being up-front if there's known issues).

Capita? Who knows, I'm still waiting for a response beyond "someone might be looking into it".

[pete]

Ok, the fix.

(No, it wasn't Capita)

Should your RBC / LA use Checkpoint firewalls, there's a feature relating to packet acceleration which is turned on by default and buried deep in the config.

This can (in certain cases) interfere with and fragment the udp keepalives that OpenVPN uses after the initial handshaking.

The fix is for the RBC to turn off the feature if nothing's using it (nothing was in our case).