Using Windows Connection Manager based VPN on macOS

Question

IT department of my company sent me a zip file for connecting to our corporate VPN. I understand that it is a deployable Windows VPN client called “Connection Manager” and it was prepared with Windows Connection Manager Administration Kit. It seems that is supposed to be installed on Windows without any parameter. After installing I have just entered my username and password and since then I can establish a VPN connection without any problem.

The main question is: How can I connect to that same VPN service from my Mac. I primarily use my Mac and switching to Windows PC every time when I need corporate resources is a pain in the neck.

I have tried to find out the parameters of the deployable client but no luck. I could not even find which protocol it is using. There are some files in the installation package named "routing.txt" or "cmroute.dll" but do not know what to do with them.

Is there any chance for me to connect to my corporate VPN on macOS Catalina? How can I extract all the parameters from the installation package on my Windows system so I can use them on macOS? (IT department is not helping me so getting help from them is out of the question)

Answer 1

Hello @Evren Yeni ,

When you start the "Network Connections Control-Panel" (type "ncpa.cpl" into Windows search), do you see the VPN connection to your company network?

If the connection is visible, then most of the information that you need for macOS is available via the connection properties. Depending on the VPN type (PPTP, L2TP, IKEv2, SSTP) then a few further VPN type specific steps might be needed. macOS does not natively support the SSTP VPN type.

Gary

Answer 2

@Evren Yeni Hi,

Thank you for posting in Q&A!

I agree with Gary, the Connection Manager Administration Kit (CMAK) only supports windows client to deploy VPN connection.

According to my reasearch, macOS built-in VPN client supports the PPTP, IKEv2, and L2TIP/IPsec VPN protocols. If you want to mannually configure a VPN for Mac, you will need to tab-in the server address, account name etc. while these information are all managed by your network administrator.

Since that we don't have the Mac OS to test, I would suggest you to contact the administrator to get the information needed by VPN connection. It seems that it's the only solution so far can be found.

Hope you have a nice day : )
Gloria

============================================

If the Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/articles/67444/email-notifications.html

Answer 3

Yes, I see the VPN in the "Network Connections Control-Panel" but there is nothing in connection properties. All are empty or default.

On the other hand, I find out that it is an SSTP VPN connection (I see it only for a second at the connection windows during the initial connection.) I also can see the VPN server address from connection properties. (Not from "Network Connections Control-Panel" but from the "Settings>Network>VPN" app) I can see lots of parameters in "routing.txt", "vpn.cms" and "vpn.inf" but do not know what to do with them.