Hotels with internet firewalls
 

Mrs Flyer Jon stayed at the Doubletree SFO last week. She was unable to access her company's VPN portal through the hotel's internet service. They told her it was due to the internet service firewall. As I don't know a lot about VPN portals...................

1. Is this correct?

2. If it is correct, anyone have any solutions (other than switching hotel)?

She had no problem in the Hilton San Fran, & Westin Century Plaza.

If her company uses the Cisco VPN client, it's quite possibly because the default connection for most installations is UDP. Switching to TCP often allows one to connect, but the VPN server at her company needs to allow that type of connection.

I had the same problem at the Crown Plaza at PVD. They wouldn't allow my Cisco VPN, so I had to use my backup AOL dial up account.

That is the only time I haven't been able to sign on with a hotel's HSI service.

If it's a IPSEC VPN, it must have a NAT "mode" in order to work at most hotels. The cisco client does, but both the client and termination server must be configured as such.

This is (in my mind) the compelling point for SSL VPNs--I've yet to meet a hotel proxy I cannot tunnel thru.