Frequent disconnects from Forticlient VPN
Hi,
My household has been using Fizz for months now. We use Fizz as a modem while still using our regular wifi router. For the last two months, I've encountered significant issues with my employer's VPN (Forticlient) while working from home. I would frequently disconnect from my work VPN anywhere between 30-50 times a day.
Per Fizz's FAQs, I found that unplugging and plugging back in my Fizz modem restored VPN stability for my work computer. When I first unplugged my Fizz modem, I had stable connection for two weeks before it started disconnecting again. Two weeks became a week, then 3-4 days, and now I have to reset my modem every morning if I hope to have a stable connection throughout my working day. Fortunately, resetting my modem still seems to provide me a stable connection for the day, at least for now.
I believe there is some issue between Fizz and my Forticlient VPN, as I worked from another location that did not use Fizz and I never had disconnection problems. Furthermore, another member of my house uses a different VPN provider associated with his employer (cisco anyconnect) and never suffers from disconnects. There seems to be some weird interaction between the two.
Is anyone dealing with the same problem? Does anyone know why resetting the modem restores VPN stability? Does anyone know how Fizz interacts with the Forticlient VPN (I believe I'm using version 5.6.6.)? Could resetting the Fizz modem every morning be bad for it, or is it just like resetting a router? And is there a more permanent solution I can try other than resetting my modem? Please advise.
Thank you.
Best Answer
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You may be double NATing with your Fizz modem/router and the additional wifi router you've added.
NAT or Network Address Translation is the way a router will manage all internal network (in your home) in regards to the outgoing communication (your IP on the internet side).
Whenever you have two routers, that messes up the NATing because your second router will have its own NAT tables and equivalencies.
Many gaming consoles do not like this and VPN too. Dont forget your VPN secures a tunnel between your employer and your computer. So if your multiple routers are masking multiple levels of IPs, then the VPN resets the tunnel or fails.
There is an fix to this.
Go into the Fizz modem/router web interface and disable the Routing capabilities. This will make it work only as a modem. Then your home wifi router will be the only one doing the routing function.
BTW, if you don't change anything, you would have had better results rebooting the wifi router instead of the fizz modem/router since that's likely the one confused with the double NAT.
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Answers
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I remember seeing a post like that from another user and it ended-up being caused by faulty wire from the service pole outside. For most internet traffic it probably isn't noticeable, but some VPN clients might be pickier about dropped packets. Contact Fizz and see if they can test your signal and if they say it's fine, but you're convinced it's their side, request a visit from a tech (note that if they can't find anything wrong or the problem was on your side, you'll have to pay for the visit).
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