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Can't simultaneously connect to both the VPN and the Internet

Sir,
I

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have a problem in my VPN connection. Sometimes the Yahoo Web site will not open. If I check with other ISPs it's working fine. I haven't able to trace out the problem. What could be the problem?
Thanks, Pavan
Pavan,
Depending on the type of VPN you are using, you may not be able to simultaneously connect to both the VPN and to the Internet. Most VPN implementations support a feature commonly referred to as split tunneling, the ability to connect both to the Web and to the VPN.

So, the first thing I would check is to see is if the tunnel is up when I cannot connect to Yahoo and if it is down when I can connect to Yahoo. If you can't connect when the tunnel is up, but you can connect when the tunnel is down, the problem may be setting up split tunnels.

The next step is to try to connect to other Web sites when the tunnel is established. If you can connect to other Web sites, but you cannot connect to Yahoo when the VPN tunnel is running, then you probably have a routing problem. There may be a route set on your PC or your default gateway that forces the Yahoo traffic through the tunnel, rather than out to the Internet.

Hope this helps,
Mark

This was first published in October 2002

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