Netgear VPN problems.

Le_Petit_Lapin

Le_Petit_Lapin

Le_Petit_Lapin

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Right, I have a Netgear FWG114P VPN router. Its working fine. Can't fault it whatsoever. I also have the Netgear Prosafe VPN client software.

After pulling my hair out quite unsuccessfully for several hours, I give up....I can't figure out how to get the VPN to work. Every guide I do to is filled with acronyms and abbreviations, reads like the alphabet jumbled up, and generally makes no sense.

Now....for what I can make out I need to get some "Certificate Authority" to issue me with a certificate, which I then add to the Prosafe software, which will give me access to the Routers network (if I get the router configuration correct) .

Simply put what on earth is a Certificate Authority? Its just a small home network that I want VPN access to, do I need some other piece of software? Do I need to set up a server in some way? Can the router act as the certificate Authority?

I was asking on the Netgear forums, and all the help they would give me was a bunch of .pdf documents, which didnt really help.

So.....does anyone here have a Netgear VPN router, and can they give me a little help in getting my router to accept VPN connections? Any help or advice at all would be great, so if you think you have something to add, please type it in!

Cheers!
 
Le_Petit_Lapin said:
Right, I have a Netgear FWG114P VPN router. Its working fine. Can't fault it whatsoever. I also have the Netgear Prosafe VPN client software.

After pulling my hair out quite unsuccessfully for several hours, I give up....I can't figure out how to get the VPN to work. Every guide I do to is filled with acronyms and abbreviations, reads like the alphabet jumbled up, and generally makes no sense.

Now....for what I can make out I need to get some "Certificate Authority" to issue me with a certificate, which I then add to the Prosafe software, which will give me access to the Routers network (if I get the router configuration correct) .

Simply put what on earth is a Certificate Authority? Its just a small home network that I want VPN access to, do I need some other piece of software? Do I need to set up a server in some way? Can the router act as the certificate Authority?

I was asking on the Netgear forums, and all the help they would give me was a bunch of .pdf documents, which didnt really help.

So.....does anyone here have a Netgear VPN router, and can they give me a little help in getting my router to accept VPN connections? Any help or advice at all would be great, so if you think you have something to add, please type it in!

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I'd forget trying to use certificates as it can be a real pain to setup. Isnt there a preshared key option?
 
First have a look at these pages from the netgear site.

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n100858.asp

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101499.asp

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101545.asp

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101500.asp

I personally found the Netgear DG834(G)'s to be very flaky when it comes to VPN, although your luck may be better with the routers you have. The main problem I had was that you can't create a permanent connection between two routers, they have a very annoying timeout period. I also found them to be very flakey when it came to re-establishing the connection after it is dropped. Sometimes I'd have to recreate the connection from scratch to get it working again. I tried every combo going over a period of about a month before I gave up on one VPN tunnel I had setup for a customer (who by that time was pulling his hair out) and ended up buying a couple of Draytek 2800's which so far have been great. If I were to start from scratch doing the same thing again I wouldn't be buying netgear, I'll be saving those for home use only from now on.

Hope the links help.

To setup a VPN connection on a windows XP machine just follow the New Connection Wizard under Network Connections.
 
The remote PC must have a NAT device that supports VPN passthrough.
Certificates are normally created in the software and uploaded to the router OR they're tftp'd off of the router to the client locally for use remotely.

read the instructions, it should tell you how to create a certificate and then how to use it to get the software to IPSEC through the router
 
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