windows 7 - Cisco AnyConnect VPN client - prevent connecting as work network

27
2013-10
  • Opmet

    From Windows 7 I'm using "Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client 3.0" to connect to our corporate network.

    Every time I establish the VPN connection Windows will set the type as "work network". I don't want this. So I go to "network and sharing center" and manually / interactively change it to "public network". But I have to repeat it for every new VPN connection.

    • Is there any way to make Windows remember / persist this configuration?
    • Can it be configured in the VPN client?
    • Do our IT admins need to change something at server end?

    Motivation: A "work network" per default uses different firewall settings that allows for stuff like "network discovery" and "file shares". But I just need "remote desktop" (mstsc).

    Additional info: Our IT admins claimed this would be Windows default behaviour and there was nothing we could do about it: Windows would always initiate a VPN connection as "work network". Based on this statement I assume this is a "general" issue and went ahead posting here (at superuser.com).

    Edit1: The situation has become even worse. Previously i would establish the VPN connection and then manually change to "public network". But now - after some time running with VPN connection - the network type automatically switches back to "work network". This means: I need to frequently check the network type and adjust when required.
    Help! How can i stop this?

    Edit2: still the same problem with Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client 3.1.04066

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  • Oliver Hanappi

    I don't know if it is possible but I would like to configure a Windows 7 VPN connection in a way that I can connect to a network which I normally reach by using Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client. Does Cisco use a protocol which Windows 7 understands also and where can I find the configuration details of the VPN connection?

    If you wonder why I'm trying to do this: I need to connect via VPN to several different networks from different companies/organizations/universities and each one uses its own VPN client. I don't want my computer to have 5 VPN clients installed, therefore I'm trying to replace them with simple Windows VPN connections.


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  • Joey

    That greatly depends on the configuration of the server. Cisco Concentrators can speak PPTP which works on nearly every version of Windows, but it's costly in terms of performance. The number of possible connections drops to about a tenth for the server so this is rarely activated.

    Furthermore there seems to be an option to enable L2TP. The documentation states that but at least for our university here no one figured out how to enable it and set it up.

    You would have to ask the person maintaining the server whether one of the above options apply.

    For the "usual" Cisco IPSec over UDP there is no native option in Windows, unfortunately.