Mobile Broadband - Use with a work PC?

[amdisuk]

Hi,

I have just bought a pay as you go mobile broadband dongle from Vodafone.

I work in an office environment where the firewall stops internet access to email websites and email servers (for security reasons). I want to be able to use my Vodafone broadband to connect to the internet and still have work network resources available. The problem is that as soon as I connect to the wired network no traffic goes through the mobile broadband. Up until yesterdat I was using anothe rprovider like this and it worked fine.

Has anyone else experienced this and is there a work around?

Thanks

[Sukhi]

Hi Big Al Stanley

Reading your post it sounds like you are trying to have both your work and dongle connection running side by side unfortunately this is not possible .

It maybe possible for the company that you work for to set up a VPN, which will connect you to your works Intranet through your Vodafone connection, however you would need to speak to the company to see if they would allow it.

Sukhi
eForum Team

[amdisuk]

Hi Sukhi,

Do you know why this restriction is in place? As I said, I have managed to do this with another provider.

I have also read about manually connecting the modem without using the Vodafone software. Is this within the terms and conditions? Is it do-able? I'm afraid that my new Vodafone dongle is useless without this functionality.

Regards

Allan

Hi Big Al Stanley

Reading your post it sounds like you are trying to have both your work and dongle connection running side by side unfortunately this is not possible .

It maybe possible for the company that you work for to set up a VPN, which will connect you to your works Intranet through your Vodafone connection, however you would need to speak to the company to see if they would allow it.

Sukhi
eForum Team

[amdisuk]

Hi Sukhi,

And yes I do have VPN access to our office network but it would be a logistical nightmare being sat in my office and having to use the dongle to connect to the office network. There are also security restrictions in place that stop me connecting to my customers from the office over a VPN.

Regards

Allan

[jarviser]

Are you sure both methods were running together with the other provider's dongle? a Windows PC normally can only cope with one active IP address at a time, and one connection path normally dominates - e.g. if you have wifi and ethernet both connected the ethernet usually dominates on boot-up and blocks out the wifi. The company network will be assigning a 192.168... address, but the dongle will be assigning a VF range IP address.

Try the DOS commant "ipconfig /all" and see what is assigned to each networtk adapter and modem.

a Dial-up modem may be different, bui your browser can't normally pick and choose between IP addresses unless you can firce it to choose the VF one. Then what happens if you need to use the company intranet?

[amdisuk]

Hi,

Yes I'm sure that it does work. I am using my other provider now. The problem I have is that email POP/IMAP and SMTP ports are blocked along with many websites. So what I do is plug into my work network and dial up using my mobile broadband. I'm not sure how it works but my internet and email traffic goes through my mobile broadband and but I can still access file shares and telnet connection on the local network.

Here is my ipconfig:


Mobile Broadband adapter Mobile Broadband Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::3179:e54
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.71.65.15
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.22
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.71.65.1

Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconne
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : eu.micros.int
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::8527:e9a
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 172.28.96.5
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.254.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 172.28.96.250

I would guess that the default gateway is maybe the issue. When I connect with my other provider the default gateway is 0.0.0.0.

Thanks for the response.

Allan

Are you sure both methods were running together with the other provider's dongle? a Windows PC normally can only cope with one active IP address at a time, and one connection path normally dominates - e.g. if you have wifi and ethernet both connected the ethernet usually dominates on boot-up and blocks out the wifi. The company network will be assigning a 192.168... address, but the dongle will be assigning a VF range IP address.

Try the DOS commant "ipconfig /all" and see what is assigned to each networtk adapter and modem.

a Dial-up modem may be different, bui your browser can't normally pick and choose between IP addresses unless you can firce it to choose the VF one. Then what happens if you need to use the company intranet?

[Retired-BenJ]

Hi Big Al Stanley


Have you tried this with the ethernet cable removed from the pc.

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : eu.micros.int
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::8527:e9a
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 172.28.96.5
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.254.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 172.28.96.250


shows your connected to your local network which probably will be blocking this via DNS lookup.

Has your IT department allowed you to over ride their security protocols? coming from an IT background there usually would be local restrictions applied on your PC that might also affect this.

Thanks
BenJ
eForum Team

[amdisuk]

H BenJ,


Absolutely. As soon as I disconnect my network cable it works again.

I think the solution here is to set up some network routing on my machine. I believe this is the way to tell windows where to route the network traffic. Basically all 192.168, 10.172 and 172.28 traffic goes to the local network. All other traffic should go out via the broadband router. Its IPv6 which adds a confusion to me.


Thanks for the reply.


Allan

Hi Big Al Stanley


Have you tried this with the ethernet cable removed from the pc.

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : eu.micros.int
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::8527:e9a
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 172.28.96.5
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.254.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 172.28.96.250


shows your connected to your local network which probably will be blocking this via DNS lookup.

Has your IT department allowed you to over ride their security protocols? coming from an IT background there usually would be local restrictions applied on your PC that might also affect this.

Thanks
BenJ
eForum Team

[amdisuk]

Hi,

I have a solution for this for anyone who is interested.

if you do a netstat -r from the windows command prompt yo get a display of the 'Route Table'. On my machine I get two tables. One for IPv4 and one for IPv6. I am only interested in IPv4 as my networks do not use the newer IPv6 protocol.

The 'Metrics' column tell you in which order Windows will try to route its traffic. So in my modified example the following table shows:


IPv4 Route Table
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 172.28.96.250 172.28.96.5 1000
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.100 200
127.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 On-link 127.0.0.1 306
127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 306
127.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 306
172.28.96.0 255.255.254.0 On-link 172.28.96.5 756
172.28.96.5 255.255.255.255 On-link 172.28.96.5 756
172.28.97.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 172.28.96.5 756
192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 On-link 192.168.1.100 356
192.168.1.100 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.1.100 356
192.168.1.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.1.100 356
224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 On-link 127.0.0.1 306
224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 On-link 192.168.1.100 356
224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 On-link 172.28.96.5 756
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 306
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.1.100 356
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 172.28.96.5 756
===========================================================================

The 172.28 network now has a metric of 1000 and the 192.168 has a metric of 200. The 192.168. The lower the metric the higher priority the route has in sequence.

To change the Metric simply go into Network Connections. Open properties of the LAN adapter. Select IPv4 and select properties. Click advanced. Uncheck Automatic Metrics (bottom of screen) and set the interface Metrics value to a higher number e.g. 100.

Do the same for the mobile broadband Adapter and set it to a lower number than the LAN adapter. Refresh you connections and your broadband adapter will be your preferred adapter.