VPN Tips / Tricks

Here are some tips and tricks when troubleshooting VPN issues for students on their own machines or perhaps a machine provided to them from an external internship.

First thing to know is that we do not actively block any VPN services from campus. This is not to say that someone's address hasn't ended up in a block list for Fortinet or SecureIT360's list that is automatically maintained. If this is a business and they're being blocked by any of those lists, they most likely know about it as the lists are global white-hat lists.

So... why are they not connecting? Usually, this requires configuration on your end. Here is a list of the top reasons why your canned security/configured machine is not working.

1. The machine must be registered with the service desk to get valid DHCP addressing. You can do this through wifi.snc.edu or through our Service Desk.  If both wired and wireless are used you'll need to register both.
   Note: If you need to access the internet without registration this can be done through our sncguest network, but this network is not in dorms.
2. You must use our DNS on campus. These servers are 138.74.0.61-64. These are provided through DHCP and should not be hard coded, but if you have a whitelisting system these need to be allowed.
3. You must not force or expect non-routable IP addressing. This is less of an issue, but sometimes comes up. We give our students addresses that are fully routable to Internet (138.74.x.x) no NAT. Some security programs actively want 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16 networks.
4. Due to the network registration system we do not require passwords for our wireless networks.  Some canned security systems we've run into will not connect to our network because of this.

If these tricks seem overwhelming, no need to worry. Stop on by the ITS Service Desk and we'd be happy to assist.