I’m using a Balance One core, and we have L2TP/IPSec vpn users set up that connect remotely from outside the office.
Any sort of large and sustained file transfers seem to cause the VPN clients to disconnect. This has been frustratingly consistent for the client.
Is this to be expected? I changed the MTU to 1492 on the WAN interface, and capped the “Upload” bandwidth at about 80% of our broadband circuit’s upload capacity (I did the same for download, but was told the download cap doesn’t actually do anything).
The MTU should be whatever your ISP uses. Are your remote clients connecting via cellular connection? I would suggest you test using an internet connection nearby, not cellular, and try to isolate whether the issue is at the remote or host end.
I’ve used Peplink’s L2TP connection literally from the other side of the world without problems, also using a Balance One at the host end, so don’t give up.
Most of my VPN client connections are from Cable/DSL/Fiber (high speed) broadband connections in the US, but this has also happened to VPN clients trying to connect from other countries.
It doesn’t seem to matter where people are – if they try to transfer big files, it seems to kill the VPN connection.
Further investigation need to be done from the device in-order to identify the issue. Please open a support here for support team to check.
Beside that, please include the test scenario that able to reproduce the issue in the support ticket and support team will help to verify on the issue.
This happens to me as well. I have a Peplink Balance 210. Never been able to figure out why it happens. When I’m at home connected to the VPN/Peplink at my office and try downloading larger files to my laptop that’s connected to the VPN 9 times out of 10 the network VPN connection disconnects before the download completes.
I have the same exact issue on the Peplink Balance One Core. I’m running firmware 6.3.1 build 2256. I’m connected to a fiber connection on both ends. The fiber is provided by the same provider. Transferring large files or multiple files has a really hard time completing. The VPN connection will terminate in the middle of the transfer. 250 files with a total size of 250mb.
This is a strange one. Our experience is exactly the same as that of @Don_Ferrario. No issues whatsoever – and we have several of these in use. But I sure wish folks to have had such issues would come back and TELL US if/how they were resolved? It helps everyone – don’t just “leave.”
And, just to confirm, these are all L2TP issues being reported, right? Not PepVPN?
@monkthecat What happened? Did you enter a support ticket? What was the result?
Yeah I have this issue with about 6 different Peplink devices (yes, L2TP, not PepVPN), all running 7.1 firmware, all on different kinds of internet providers. I’ve spent hours on the phone with Peplink support, they have no idea what’s happening.
So I’ve been slowly changing my customers over to Meraki routers, and the problem hasn’t happened a single time, no matter how hard I hammer the VPN connection.
I loved Peplink, so am sad that this seems to be the solve, but that’s where I’m heading.
Hey Rick, as I said in my post: yes I opened many support tickets with support, Peplink had no idea what was causing the drops. My solve has been to replace the Peplinks with either Merakis or Sonicwalls, and I have not had the VPN drop issue once with either platform. So there is no wisdom I have to share here, except that moving away from the Peplink platform was the only way to resolve the issue.
I have many Peplink Balance ones and 20s as well as Pepwave devices and I find random ones seem to cause a lot of issues with ipsec vpn tunnels. Today alone, removed the balance one replaced with a netgear n750 (all I had with me) no problems on the VPN. Am I missing a setting?
@Rick-DC Sorry, I got tied up with other stuff and didn’t have notifications turned on. I’ll answer the questions as best I can.
This still happens for me, I did notice that it seems to happen more on one Internet Provider than the other one. So, perhaps the internet provider having the issue more often has something setup differently.
@sitloongs - Sorry, I got off track with other stuff and didn’t have notifications turned on I guess.
What is the firmware version running for you B210 ?
7.1.1 build 3548
Larger files ? What is the files size ?
Sometimes it’s files the size of a couple hundred megs. Mostly I notice when I’m downloading an ISO image (CentOS 7) to my laptop when connected to the VPN.
The disconnection happen randomly when downloading the files ? Usually how long the VPN client will disconnected?
There’s no specific time I notice the disconnects happen. Sometimes i’ve started a file download to my laptop and it gets 80% complete, sometimes it’s 30%, no real specific duration.
What the is the WAN health check method configured for the B210 ?
WAN health check for both WANs is as follows: Health Check Method: DNS Lookup Health Check DNS Servers: Empty (Use first two DNS servers as Health Check DNS Servers is checked) Timeout: 5 seconds Health Check Interval: 5 seconds Health Check Retries: 3 Recovery Retries: 3
Any event logs generated when VPN clients disconnected ?
No logs are generated
The issue happen for different client device as well ?
I’m not sure, I’m the only one using VPN and using the same macbook pro (2015).
I will try and reproduce right now and report exactly what happens.
I just downloaded a 900MB file while connected to the VPN using the same laptop as before and it did not disconnect. I’ve been connected to the VPN for 3+ hours. I had updated the firmware since this had last happened. I’ll connect to the VPN on my other WAN and try downloading again.
I just got disconnected while downloading the same file while connected to the VPN through the other WAN connection. It got about 1/3 of the way through the download then I got a popup on my Mac I was disconnected by the PPP server (see screen shot).
Same problems
Peplink Balance 305
8.0.2 build 2721
Windows 10
1903
Build18362.863
Both WAN ends are Fiber stable connections
Seems to be droping randomly after playing even a Youtube video or trying to download a large file
Would be interesting to find a solution.
I noticed that when it drops sometimes its not connecting back after 5 minutes so it might be the windows VPN client L2TP
would be interesting ti have standalone VPN app to connect back like Cisco Anywhere or Sophos or any othe rsolid solution.
we can trust windoes mechanisms
Hello, I have multiple users connecting using the L2TP connection. They are able to connect when trying from different remote locations. However, when two or more are working at the same remote location it only allows one person to connect at a time. When the second person connects the first person gets dropped. Is this a known issue and is there a setting I am missing. Thank you for your guidance. Device is a Balance 30. Firmware 8.0.2 build 4407 and Hardware Revision is 3
@IanHelm I realize this is an old thread, but have experienced the same issue with one of my clients.
I may be wrong, but I think the solution requires a separate small router to be setup at the remote location (establishing an isolated LAN for your users) and a site-to-site VPN to be established back to your main office’s Peplink router. You’d probably want to use a Peplink Surf Soho (with external hotspot) or a Balance 20X to send out with the remote users.
Reason: I believe most L2TP VPNs only track the IP address of the client connecting to them. If you have multiple people connecting from the same remote IP address, the VPN will accept the first connection from that IP address, but if a second connection is attempted from the same IP address, the VPN will recognize the IP address and assume it already has a connection from that IP address. In that case, it will either refuse/ignore the second connection request (because it won’t be able to differentiate between them) or it will drop the first connection believing that the remote client’s transmission was broken and the client is attempting to reconnect.
