Global Protect VPN connects but data stream blocked

[NijiK]

I have a similar problem to previous posters but cannot see a cut and dried resolution.

I've been with EE since the middle of June 2022 and initially everything was fine until about 4 days in when my wife's (works from home) connection through our home BB network stopped allowing her to stream data with her employers services via Palo Alto's Global Connect VPN. It connects but something is preventing data being transferred.

She uses a company provided laptop and has tried to connect with LAN (via TP-Link Powerline sockets) and WiFi (on auto-connect and by specifying 2.4 or 5.0 GHz bands) and neither work. She can connect just fine using her company Android mobile phone hotspot using O2 mobile network and also using my iPhone mobile hotspot using EE mobile network.

After many calls with EE customer services they sent out an Openreach engineer who confirmed that my home network and everything connected to it was working correctly and there was no fault on the line.

Previous occurrences on this Community have suggested replacing the EE Hub but I cannot see any evidence that this actually solved anything but we gave it a try with EE (eventually) sending out a new Hub. New Hub connected and it worked! Until 4 days later when the connection via the VPN was blocked again!

Called EE again and they tested everything and there was nothing that they could see that was causing the problem. Wife's employer's IT are adamant that it is not their software/hardware causing the issue. I am sure (and supported by both EE and wife's company's IT that my network is not causing the issue.

I suggested connecting the original EE Hub to see if it was still showing a problem and got agreement from EE. Connected the original router and it works! I am, however, fully expecting this to stop working again in about 4 days.

Nothing else on my home network is affected. I have multiple devices connected on both LAN and WiFi with the most demand being through the TV (LAN - streaming services),  iPads (WiFi - streaming services) and PlayStation 5 (LAN - online gaming/streaming services).

Prior to switching to EE we were with Vodafone BB under the same circumstance with regards to BB use but had no problems connecting to the VPN - this only seems to occur since joining EE.

I know the EE people are trying their best but if they cannot fix this issue long term I will have to terminate my contract and find another ISP which is unfortunate as apart from this one issue I have no problem whatsoever with EE.

Can anybody please help?

[XRaySpeX]

In Home Broadband settings you'll find almost everything you need to set up your own router. What's missing for Fibre is:

• VLAN ID = 101.

[NijiK]

Update 03/08/22 …

OpenReach network engineer visited and discovered a large resistance fault plus some other smaller faults on my BB line. Several connections were remade in the street cabinet, and pavement box. Street to premises cable pair found to also have a near-terminal fault on them so swapped out for the other pair in the cable. Faults have now gone or near as gone as they can be. Router factory reset carried out to restore default settings and everything has now restarted. Wife is now able to connect to her company’s VPN even though it is through the same router as the last failure. Speeds seem to be better than before too.

Now we just have to wait 4 days and see if it is still working - fingers crossed!

I will update again after 4 days.

[Leanne_T]

Thanks for coming back and letting us know @NijiK

I hope this is all sorted now for you. 

Leanne.

[XRaySpeX]

I do wonder what can be the connection between a VPN & the condition of cables in the street.

[NijiK]

The thinking is that there could have been excessive noise on the line, lost packets or packets out of sequence, etc. which maybe looked suspicious to the VPN’s security protocols and were subsequently blocked.

I don’t know if that is correct or not but if it turns out to be fixed after 4 days or so then it is quite possibly true.