Windows does not really offer any good ways of setting up a permanent VPN connection that is stable.
People are literally loosing their minds over it.
We came up with a pretty nice solution to this problem by combining
- Windows Powershell
- Windows VPN Client
- Windows Task scheduler
At the server side
- Make sure your VPN Server is set up and working. This will not be covered here.
At the client side
- Set up a new VPN Connection. Just follow the usual "Connecto to a workplace" wizard. Make sure that the VPN connection works.
- After creating the connection - set these Redial properties. The redial functionality works as it should most of the time, but it's not 100% trustable.
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- Also - Uncheck "Use default gateway on remote network" - in order to prevent all network/internet trafic to go through the VPN (unless this is what you want).
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- Since the Redial functionality of the VPN Connection isn't trustable - it's best to deal with this yourself. It's
hammerpowershell time. Create c:\pn.ps1and add the following:$ip = "10.20.30.40" $result = gwmi -query "SELECT * FROM Win32_PingStatus WHERE Address = '$ip'" if ($result.StatusCode -eq 0) { Write-Host "$ip is up." } else{ Write-Host "$ip is down." Write-Host "Disconnecting..." rasdial.exe DegreeVPN /DISCONNECT Write-Host "Connecting..." rasdial.exe DegreeVPN vpnUsername vpnPassword12345 }The script pings an IP that should be available through the VPN. If the ping is unsucecssfull - the connection is reestablished. You can also set up routes here (and get notifications by email every time the VPN was disconnected) if you add a few more lines to the script.
- Start up a powershell and type "Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted" order to allow the script to be executed.
- Schedule this script to execute at startup (no user/login necessary) and also every 5 minutes.
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- Bingo! You now have a robust and permanent VPN Connection in windows. This works with PPTP, L2TP, SSTP and IKEv2, and have been tested on Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.
