I lost connection to the VPN network after a few minutes (Home office user)

Question

Hi,

once a user called me and said: "I'm not able to access the office network".

What was the symptom:

1 - VPN connected normally
2 - When trying to access the network share (\server\share), without access
3 - Ping to the (server) responding normally

After several unsuccessful tests:

1 - Driver and firmware update
2 - Installing Windows updates or removing updates that were recently installed
3 - Disable the antivirus

Solution:

1 - We observed that the cable was connected which is not very common nowadays in remote users and it was also connected to the Wifi network. We asked to disconnect the Wifi network and everything worked.

We know that the operating system is responsible for managing connections and I believe that it prioritizes network cabling as the main thing instead of Wifi.

Has anyone experienced this?

Does anyone have any explanation or suggestion to prevent this from happening?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi

Having two connection will always cause problem sadly. The problem is the VPN connect from one of the two ready and when the user request an site or share the computer got two default route, so it try by one of the two gateway available.. Another issue is when the VPN kick in, there is DNS available on that virtual card, but the second card got a DNS's server too (public's one). So when the computer use the bad DNS server it resolve \server as an unknown host, as it's not avaiable on the public DNS.

It's like having a house with two front door, you can't be sure the postman/ups man on which he will knock on.

I always suggest to the user to close the wifi to use a cable for latency issue, if no cable then make them use wifi. It fall more as users training.

Having two connection can allow you to make some high end scenario on the other side, but it's too complex for a normal users. (like default route for only compagny IP inside the VPN and internet traffic via the other cards, but it's hard to fine tune as it's specific per computer/user)

Answer 2

Hello there,

Generally, we have no reason to change network connection priority, because the Windows computer has chosen the right network connection. But if you want to select the preferred network and want to automatically connect to it, or you just want to make the connection sequence different, and in case your are facing issues like this try to change the priority and see if that helps.

How to change the network connection priority in Windows https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-change-the-network-connection-priority-in-windows-7-546c0249-1ade-367a-570f-de2f17bda23d

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