VPN goes to sleep
For years I have used a Windows VPN connection between home (client, now Win7/32 Pro, formerly XP) and work (server, XPPro). The server uses a range of two IPs, effectively making the IPs constant. Each machine has the other's virtual IP in the LMHOSTS file and accesses shares on the other machine by name. Since switching from XP to Win7 on the home (client) machine I find that after a period of inactivity the work (server) machine cannot initiate a transaction (e.g., open "\\client\d$" from the "Run" dialog). A one-hour period of inactivity is sufficient to cause this; a half-hour period is not. When this happens the VPN is still connected, and the client side can initiate transactions. After the client has initiated a transaction, the server side can do so again (for a while). This never happened when the client was XP. Does anyone know what's going? Thanks. - Vince
August 6th, 2011 1:54pm

For years I have used a Windows VPN connection between home (client, now Win7/32 Pro, formerly XP) and work (server, XPPro). The server uses a range of two IPs, effectively making the IPs constant. Each machine has the other's virtual IP in the LMHOSTS file and accesses shares on the other machine by name. Since switching from XP to Win7 on the home (client) machine I find that after a period of inactivity the work (server) machine cannot initiate a transaction (e.g., open "\\client\d$" from the "Run" dialog). A one-hour period of inactivity is sufficient to cause this; a half-hour period is not. When this happens the VPN is still connected, and the client side can initiate transactions. After the client has initiated a transaction, the server side can do so again (for a while). This never happened when the client was XP. Does anyone know what's going? I believe this problem is solved, but not being an IT pro, I don't thoroughly understand it. The problem described above lasted a week. Last night, I assigned a previously unassigned firewall rule to allow GRE-in (RRAS) (and started a firewall log). The VPN connection worked perfectly for a day. Curious, tonight I unassigned the rule and the VPN again behaved as in my original complaint. And the firewall log collected one of these each minute: 2011-08-06 20:39:14 DROP 47 128.230.13.36 74.71.55.217 - - 85 - - - - - - - RECEIVE Above, the hosts are (resp) the VPN server and client; and 47 is GRE. When I re-assigned the rule, VPN started behaving again and the log entries stopped. It would seem Windows should assign this rule when it's (configured to be) a VPN client. As I said, I'm no pro at this so any elaboration would be much appreciated. Respectfully, - Vince
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August 12th, 2011 12:31am

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