[vpn-help] iked.exe process at 100% cpu?

[Gerd Röthig]

Dear Matthew, dear all,

doing some search in the net, I came across the VPN-Help mailinglist and
found that the problem that IKED.EXE sometimes consumes up to 100% CPU was
already discussed back in 2008. 

Unfortunately, that problem seems to persist under some circumstances. 

Using Shrew Soft VPN Client 2.1.7, I experience that after some time, with
increasing network traffic over the VPN, IKED.EXE consumes more and more
CPU. Especially when doing audio- or video conferences over the VPN, the CPU
load very soon hits the 100% level. As I, unfortunately, am still using a
single-core system, the computer becomes more and more unresponsive in its
operation. 

I fiddled around a bit with the several options available for a VPN
connection and found that there is possibly an influence by the setting of
the "Compress Algorithm" on the Phase 2 tab. Leaving it disabled seemingly
causes IKED to consume less CPU than enabling the compression. 

Unfortunately, disabling the compression significantly decreases network
transfer rates in my case. 

Please find attached a debug log file for IKED. Interesting are the time
frames around 11:00, 11:10, and 11:19 (at that time, a web page was loaded
in the Firefox browser).

It also seems that enabling IKE Fragmentation and NAT-Traversal also might
help a bit.

Thank you very much for any helpful hint in advance and kind regards,

Gerd

Here is some information about the system I am using:

VPN Client Version: 2.7.1 (the same happens also with 2.2.0-rc2)
OS: Windows XP with SP3
Gateway: not known
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