Windows PPTP VPN connection keeps dying

[chris.kernaghan]

Hi,

I am running a Windows PPTP VPN to a customer's site. I am becoming
frustrated that the connection stops working after 4 minutes.

This means that I have to disconnect and then reconnect to continue my
work, thus slowing me up greatly.

I have tried rebuilding the config on my Netgear DG843G router (I have
the updated firmware which allows PPTP VPN Pass through)

I have tried upgrading the Windows XP (Professional SP2) driver on my
integrated Intel Pro 100 network card in my Toshiba laptop.

Is there a way to provide a more complete log from the connection, or
is there a good VPN product which will allow me to use this connection.
Perhaps one that works on Cisco, and Checkpoint NG firewalls. That way
I can ditch the other VPN clients I am using.

Yes I have multiple VPN clients, but none of them run by default the
services are all disabled until they are required using a batch file
which then disables them after use.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

TIA

Chris aka BoobBoo

 

[Steve]

Hi Chris

I had a similar problem and managed to track it down to the connection
management activities of IE and Outlook Express which insist on treating VPN
connections as dial up (probably correctly in some respects) and applying
any residual disconnect on idle timeout and after sending and receiving.

As part of the digging around I used

netsh ras set tracing ppp enabled

which dumps a trace file to :

C:\WINDOWS\tracing\ppp.log

After spotting that PPPSTOP was sent to the VPN client when Outlook Express
was active I disabled the trace with:

netsh ras set tracing ppp disabled

Hope this helps
Cheers
Steve