[vpn-help] Automatic re-connection option

[Andrei Remenchuk]

On 7/30/2010 2:26 AM, Matthew Grooms wrote:
> On 7/29/2010 1:28 AM, Andrei Remenchuk wrote:
>> I am evaluating Shrew Soft VPN client and it's working well for me on 
>> Windows 7 x64, where other clients have troubles. Thanks for that.
>>
>> The problem is that my VPN connection breaks periodically - sometimes 
>> every couple of hours and sometimes as often as every few minutes. 
>> This is just how my gateway is - it is not VPN client's fault. I just 
>> re-connect and keep working.
>>
>> With other clients, I am able to set up automatic re-connection.
>>
>> Why doesn't Shrew Soft VPN client have an option to automatically 
>> re-connect disconnected sessions ? I understand that I can do it 
>> manually, but that is quite disruptive. If there's no way to achieve 
>> auto-reconnection in the current version, then consider it a feature 
>> request.
>>
>> I tried 2.1.6-beta10 and 2.2.0-alpha-9.
>> The error I see in the log is "session terminated by gateway".
>>
>
> Is it a DPD timeout? Have you tried disabling this feature? Some 
> gateways don't handle it very well.
>
> -Matthew

Thanks.

I tried disabling DPD, but it made no difference - I still get 
disconnected. I have plenty of evidence of the gateway being solely 
responsible for this. All other clients I used had the same problem. 
When using VPNC, for example, I could work around this by checking if 
daemon process is alive and re-launching it from a background script. 
That's ugly, but it worked.

But regardless of the reason for disconnection, having auto-reconnect 
will make the software more valuable. Manual reconnection is disruptive 
and tedious task which we need to do quite often. That's especially 
painful if you work with more than one gateway. Another case when it 
will help is when computer emerges from standby in new local network.