Did ANYONE get Cisco VPN to work with WM5?

Hi,
I spend a lot of time in the last couple of days to make this work out. First I tried AnthaVPN v. 5.8, but it really messed up the wifi -it worked "okay" while AnthaVPN was installed, but when AnthaVPN was uninstalled it stopped working completely. Their WM5 version is still in beta, so no hard feelings there. However, I tried all kinds of settings in AnthaVPN but never made it past XAUTH.

Next program was NCP Secure, where the problem was that I couldn't get ActiveSync to work afterwards, see above thread. Ollie helped me out there, though it seemed the Axim overwrited my changes everytime I softresetted. After applying the changes, trying active sync and then softresetting the machine, everything was ok.

Now I needed to connect to the VPN-gateway; I made 9 promising profiles, but only two of them made it to the IKE Phase 1. (But not past) The exchange method in those two profiles was set to "Main" as far as i remember. I send a mail to the NCP tech support containing my logs to see if they could help me out. (This was before the last post from Ollie, would have been interesting to test some of the same settings.)

Now I thought I could just as well try the (last?) alternative, BlueFire VPN. After install, everything worked flawlessly. It really managed to install without any problems afterwards. I started again trying out different combinations, and what made thinks worse was, that the same configuration yielded different results on different occasions.

The config that worked for me was setting IKE settings to:
IKE setup:
Encryption Algorithm: 3-DES
Hash algorithm: MD5
DH Group : Group 2
Perfect Forward Secrecy: enable

IPsec setup:
Encryption Algorithm: 3-DES
Hash algorithm: MD5
Compression algorithm: None
Perfect Forward Secrecy: disable

I found the last thing rather weird, to enable PFS in IKE and not in IPsec? I don't think I found this option in one of the other clients, but then again, what is auto in one program may not be in the other.

The price for BlueFire is 79$ and NCP is 90$ - almost the same. (And a lot of money..) I must say that of the three clients I like bluefire the most - I feel dependant when I cannot view or change my settings while on the go, like on the NCP, but that is just a personal opinion. What matters is, afterall, that you are able to connect in the first place.

This was all from now, many thanks to Sean and Ollie, for giving me back faith in VPN with this thread. I think a lot of people have given up on Cisco + VPN + WM5, but now, if they do a search, they will get at least three contacts to people it has worked for. If anyone have a succesful connection with either of the programs, it will be a great help to newcomers if you posted your settings here.

Have a nice weekend,
Thomas

[aznanubis]

Can I ask which client and gateway was successful?

Can I ask which client and gateway was successful?

Sure. For my part it was the Bluefire VPN client and the Cisco Concentrator 3000 Gateway. I think the other two was connecting to the same gateway, but with the client: NCP Secure.

[tinyballz]

Yes I used NCP Secure and Im not sure what kind of Cisco gateway it is... but its definitely Cisco.

I was gonna try BlueFire but when I installed it it messed up my bluetooth and i didnt bother fixing it cause NCP works now.

[aznanubis]

Using Athna VPN they just released demo that has been tested on WM 5.0

Using Athna VPN they just released demo that has been tested on WM 5.0

The Antha version I tried was also supposed to work with WM5, but I had problems nevertheless.. Are you connecting succesfully to a Cisco Gateway now, or are you still trying? When or if you are succesfull, please post your experiences here. Good luck,
Thomas

[nicelittle]

The Antha version I tried was also supposed to work with WM5, but I had problems nevertheless.. Are you connecting succesfully to a Cisco Gateway now, or are you still trying? When or if you are succesfull, please post your experiences here. Good luck,
Thomas

FYI: I have no problem using Antha 5.8 with X51V, connecting to Cisco VPN 3000.

First install the license, then install Antha and reset.

Update: for some unknown reason, it stops working for me. I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that AnthaVPN never recognize Dell Internal WIFI card so the option to connect via
WIFI is always diabled. But I was able to connect before, well I guess the software is still buggy.

[aznanubis]

My Antha VPN 5.8 is kinda buggy. I have disable and then re-enable the wireless function of my Axim x51 for it to pick up an IP address with Cisco 3000.

Hi, thought I would share this information, as I don't remember seeing it elsewhere. And since it is mostly of use to the readers of this thread I thought I would post it here. A few days ago I could barely connect to my cisco-gateway, and my axim got extremely laggy whenever I tried. The reason was the log-files in the \Log directory - one of them had grown to more than 14MB! I deleted it right away, but perhaps I should have had a look in it - from my desktop PC I guess.. 14MB of data could be almost every packet I send and recieved through VPN since install, so it's a bit scary I think!

The options inside the program doesn't mention anything about the log-function, so it does not appear to be possible to turn it off easily. In the registry entry under the program you can chose where to put the log-files, but there does not seem to be an option to turn it off there either. Perhaps by leaving the log-path empty, but I haven't tried that.

That was all, hope this can be of use to some of you!

Thomas

EDIT: I consulted the manual (as always the last solution, for some reason) and found that there is a small program, bflutil.exe, in the program-folder. It gives you alot of options to specify what you want to log, and what not.

[jm12345]

Okay I did a searching on this and I found this forum. Do I have to buy a license in order to use this? Thats no good, um yeah

[Jortiz]

I also have the same king of problems, can you tell me which software and version you are using. And how to which settings did you use.

I use groupwise for email and I get connected through a Cisco VPN in my laptop and need to set it up in my Axim X51V to use outlook to download emails through WIFI.

thanks

JO

[jm12345]

Yeah I have to connec to a VPN for school and have no clue what to download or on how to set it up, anyone?

Just get the demo copy of either the NCP Secure VPN or BlueFire VPN and set it up as shown in some of the messages above. At some point you will have to make a decision to purchase one of these programs and they are not cheap.

I also have the same king of problems, can you tell me which software and version you are using. And how to which settings did you use.

I use groupwise for email and I get connected through a Cisco VPN in my laptop and need to set it up in my Axim X51V to use outlook to download emails through WIFI.

thanks

JO

Jortiz and jm12345, welcome to the 'VPN on PDA' wagon. I am connecting succesfully to a Cisco Concentrator 3000 with Bluefire VPN ver. 220190 for WM2005. I use Extended Authentification, which means that I have a gateway IP-address, a Diffe-Helmann group (DHgroup) number, a groupname, a group password, a username and a user password. If you open your .pcf file in your Cisco VPN client program-folder with notepad, you will find those informations. The group password might be encrypted, in which case you should ask the guys at your respective IT-departments for the password.

After you get the program and those data, don't expect it to connect in the first run. The IKE and IPSec settings have to be set very exact. I bought the Bluefire client for 67.15$, I got a 15% student discount. Still, it's a lot of money. But I am using it daily, so I think it is worth it. Please write if you have more questions, I will check up on this thread on a daily basis until you are connecting succesfully.

Good luck,
Thomas

[jm12345]

Yeah see I can't spend that type of money on something like that. I would use it a great deal, however I can't understand how I can get it for free on the PC you know? Thanks, let me know on any more information.