Is VPN supported by AOL? AOL and FREE VPN

Mike’s boss wants to connect remotely into his work LAN from his home using VPN. They are using a netgear DG834N adsl modem router which fully supports VPN. The company end of the VPN tunnel is configured correctly as many other users can connect quickly and reliably (none of them use aol).

Question: Does anyone know if AOL broadband supports VPN connections?

Answer: Yes you can use a VPN over AOL. My friend has a netgear DG632 and have being using a VPN into my company for over a year. I dont use AOL so I cant check right now, but I have setup at least 2 different types of vpn on aol.

A vpn is just an encrypted data connection. VPN traffic is then sent through this connection and pops out the other end looking like local traffic.
The type of connection will depend on the vpn implementation (ipsec, ssh, ssl etc). AOL might not give you support setting this up, but they cant really prevent you; even if they blocked ports you could tunnel a connection over http or other unblocked ports.

Your AOL version is not relevant/needed, you will just be using your internet connection. You install the vpn client application and the client will setup a connection using your internet connection.

Can anyone ping the vpn server? it is very possible that they have turned pings off to hide the server from casual hackers.

Just install the client software, and configure as specified by your company. It has been a while since I have setup any vpns but I think that the client side does not usually require you to open ports on your router.

Try turning off your firewall (temporarily), your vpn may have added a new virtual adapter and subnet that the firewall is blocking.

Connect to yoor router (http://192.168.0.1 ?) and check the MTU, dont remember for netgear but it will be somewhere under DSL/Internet configuration. If the MTU is greater than 1450 then change it to 1450. This could cause problems with encrypted traffic.

I dont use this type (ipsec) of vpn because they are harder to setup/configure. But from what i can remember “aggressive mode” is one of the modes for the initial key exchange before the connection is setup. Some vpn servers will not allow agressive mode because it is less secure. Is the mode main/aggressive a configurable option in your client side sortware.

Aggressive mode uses less packets than main mode.
The connection is initiated by the client. So it is the client that is picking the mode that your server does not allow. Check your settings in the client and see it there is an option to only use main mode.

Don’t remember if I mentioned it earlier, but always temporarily disable any firewalls that you have installed when you have issues with new network settings. Does not sound like this is a problem right now (you have not got far enough yet) but I have been bitten so many times by forgetting to configure my firewalls.

Also if you do get past the aggressive mode problem the it may be worth trying it on a PC that does not have the aol software or deinstalling AOL software ( you dont need it to use the ‘net and you are never sure what it is doing).