I have no idea why, but I've found that the wireless networks in use at O'Reilly events (such as the MySQL User Conference, were I am now) are quite hostile to anyone using Cisco's VPN client.
Grr.
I guess I get my email but not reply to anything while I'm here.
How annoying.
Posted by jzawodn at April 19, 2005 11:25 AM
Might want to check to see if UDP port 10000 is allowed. WHen I took a class @ Cisco it wasn't allowed and had to use TCP port 10000 to connect to my VPN, which required a change in things. That should fix it
Have you tried enabling transparent tunneling on the Transport tab in your connection properties? IPSec over TCP has never failed me yet.
Well, I have to retract that. After working flawlessly yesterday and this morning, I can no longer connect since lunch.
We've had problems as well. Twice I've had to have our net admin reset the session for the conference IP. He calls it a "rogue session", where the VPN server thinks you're connected because it has a record, but the session is actually gone.
The packet loss over the VPN is horrendous, as well.
Well, yesterday in the middle of the Advanced MySQL Performance Tuning tutorial, the wireless totally stopped connecting to the outside world. As for VPN, we use PPTP and I haven't had any issues, thank goodness.
Further info - no problems connecting in rooms F & G, but can't connect anywhere else.
You might want to check your MTU on your wireless card. Oftentimes, particularly with DSL connections but sometimes on wireless, a high MTU will cause odd networking problems like being able to receive some things, but not others...usually has to do with the size of said "thing" (read: big emails).
A quick way to check if packets of a certain size are getting through is with ping:
ping -f -l 1500 google.com
I'm not at MySQL, but I didn't have any problems at OSCON last year. Maybe the Overture VPN was set up slightly differently from the main Y! VPN? As I recall, packet loss was a big problem in or near the sessions, though. The less crowded lobby worked a lot better then.
Please try it now, I've opened 10500. We debugged our setup for Cisco's VPN via IPSec some events ago; we've had many clients connect fine using it. Please understand that we are proactive about such things; you needed only to speak to a conference staff member and they can direct us to open ports.
It's good we found this blog. Let us know if it works for you!
David Hopper
Global Event Services, Inc.
Yes, if you're having problems with wireless (or any other aspect of the conference), please speak to an O'Reilly conference staff member, and we'll try to help sort out the problem. The staff people are wearing black tops that say "O'Reilly Conference Team".
Or send me email -- I'm gina@oreilly.com
Gina Blaber
Conference Director, O'Reilly
