RV042 Gateway-Gateway VPN Problem

[jonhanshew]

I have two RV042 routers connected and configured for VPN by the book. 

The office site subnet is 192.168.1;  The factory site is on 192.168.2. 

They have been working flawlessly for three months until yesterday.

Now I cannot:ping either subnet from the other.  

The DB servers cannot see each other either. 

Software firewalls are turned off on both sides.

I used to be able to browse folders by using the remote hot's IP address in a WindowsExplorer window.

The routers on both sides show a "connected" VPN status, yet nothing works.  Also the log files show that the routers are chatting to on another quite happily.

I would welcome ideas from anyone out there.

[SamirD]

3 months a looooong uptime for these routers without a problem.  Reboot them and your problem should be gone.  I use a script to reboot mine automatically every day.

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[jonhanshew]

Thanks for the reply.  It got my hopes up, but rebooting both routers did not improve anything.  Still cannot ping the remote site from either side.

I am now investigating the avast! antivirus installed on the work side of the link.  It was updated last week.  There are reports that it has interrupted VPN connections in the past.

Thanks again,

Jon

[jonhanshew]

Additional thought.

If the Gateway-to-Gateway status is "Connected," shouldn't I be able to ping the remote gateway at least as a minimum?

What could prevent a ping of the remote gateway at 192.168.2.1 from 192.168.1.1?

[SamirD]

What are you using to test the connection?  If you're not getting a ping from the diagnostic page of each router to the other side, it's definitely not connected, no matter what the status says.  (I found the status to be incorrect at times.)

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[jonhanshew]

I am using PING in a console window.  Ping function in diagnostic page failed as well.

Very interesting.  What could be the cause of this?

[jonhanshew]

Success finallly.

I found this configuration somewhere on the 'Net.  Tried it.  It now works.

I (i.e. the original author) found that the problem occurred when I set "Phase2 Encryption".

Finally, I found a solution to fix it.

1. Set "Phase2 Encryption" as NULL

2. In "Advanced" option, set "AH Hash Algorithm" as MD5

3. Enable "Aggressive Mode"

4. Enable "Compress (Support IP Payload Compression Protocol(IPComp))"

5. Enable "Keep-Alive"

6. Enable "Dead Peer Detection (DPD) Interval 10 seconds"

[SamirD]

Super-strange.  Unless you upgraded the firmware or something like that, there's no reason the same configuration shouldn't have worked.  Glad you got it working though.

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