I need connectivity help!
June 14, 2013 10:10 AM Subscribe
My wife is trying to work from home, and her computer won't let her.
My wife has been given the opportunity to work from home. She's been trying to get her laptop set up right all week, and we've hit a brick wall. She uses Remote Desktop to connect to her work PC, and a securID token to log in, a pretty standard big-company work-from-home setup.
From home, she can connect to her work machine and log in fine, but once logged in, she has a problem with maintaining a connection - about every 30 seconds, the connection drops and resets itself. We've troubleshot everything we can think of, and now I need help but I'm not even sure where to start.
Specs and details:
- Home laptop is a Lenovo running Win8 - the machine's barely a month old and is stock, not loaded up with any extraneous software (no Norton/Macafee firewall running, for example). Her work swears that their connectivity is compatible with Win8.
- We initially connected via wifi, but we've also tried a hardwired connection and experienced the same problem.
- Tried connecting to work via both Firefox and Chrome, same problem.
- Tried connecting via an older XP laptop, both FF and Chrome, same problem.
- All other wifi devices in the house (phones, streaming Blu-Ray, etc) work as expected and do not drop connections.
I have absolutely no idea where to go next, which is why I'm here. It doesn't seem to be a wifi connection issue, and my suspicion that it was a hardware/config issue with the new machine was seemingly made moot by having the same problem on an older machine.
I know this is a long shot, but does anybody have any ideas what may be wrong, or what we should try investigating next?
My wife has been given the opportunity to work from home. She's been trying to get her laptop set up right all week, and we've hit a brick wall. She uses Remote Desktop to connect to her work PC, and a securID token to log in, a pretty standard big-company work-from-home setup.
From home, she can connect to her work machine and log in fine, but once logged in, she has a problem with maintaining a connection - about every 30 seconds, the connection drops and resets itself. We've troubleshot everything we can think of, and now I need help but I'm not even sure where to start.
Specs and details:
- Home laptop is a Lenovo running Win8 - the machine's barely a month old and is stock, not loaded up with any extraneous software (no Norton/Macafee firewall running, for example). Her work swears that their connectivity is compatible with Win8.
- We initially connected via wifi, but we've also tried a hardwired connection and experienced the same problem.
- Tried connecting to work via both Firefox and Chrome, same problem.
- Tried connecting via an older XP laptop, both FF and Chrome, same problem.
- All other wifi devices in the house (phones, streaming Blu-Ray, etc) work as expected and do not drop connections.
I have absolutely no idea where to go next, which is why I'm here. It doesn't seem to be a wifi connection issue, and my suspicion that it was a hardware/config issue with the new machine was seemingly made moot by having the same problem on an older machine.
I know this is a long shot, but does anybody have any ideas what may be wrong, or what we should try investigating next?
Have you tried connecting with a different Internet connection? It's possible there could be a problem with the way your router or your upstream Internet provider works.
posted by grouse at 10:21 AM on June 14, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by grouse at 10:21 AM on June 14, 2013 [3 favorites]
Best answer: The first thing you need to try is bypassing your router by connecting the computer directly to the modem and see if the problem goes away. Could be a port forwarding issue.
Next I would check for packet loss. The idea that you can otherwise "stream" is not really congruous, as this is a sustained connection, while those streaming service utilize buffering pretty heavily. Try larger packet sizes to both reliable IP addresses as well as the one you are connecting to. "ping google.com -t -l 1500"
posted by GooseOnTheLoose at 10:22 AM on June 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
Next I would check for packet loss. The idea that you can otherwise "stream" is not really congruous, as this is a sustained connection, while those streaming service utilize buffering pretty heavily. Try larger packet sizes to both reliable IP addresses as well as the one you are connecting to. "ping google.com -t -l 1500"
posted by GooseOnTheLoose at 10:22 AM on June 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
You might be getting an IP conflict between what your router doles out and what the work VPN gives you. You can go into your router admin screen and change the IP range it doles out to 10.1.100.x or something other than 192.168.1.x. This would be especially true if connecting directly to the internet modem, as suggested above, solves the problem.
posted by gatorbiddy at 10:28 AM on June 14, 2013
posted by gatorbiddy at 10:28 AM on June 14, 2013
Response by poster: Dasein - yep, forgot to list it up there, but tried IE7, 8, and 10. No joy. And her IT hasn't been the most responsive, they just dismiss it as a problem with her machine which they show no interest in diagnosing.
Gooseontheloose - we'll try that, thanks.
gatorbiddy - if connecting to the modem works, I'll give that a shot.
posted by pdb at 10:34 AM on June 14, 2013
Gooseontheloose - we'll try that, thanks.
gatorbiddy - if connecting to the modem works, I'll give that a shot.
posted by pdb at 10:34 AM on June 14, 2013
Would she be allowed to use an alternative remote control software, like LogMeIn or GoToMyPC?
posted by IanMorr at 10:47 AM on June 14, 2013
posted by IanMorr at 10:47 AM on June 14, 2013
My ex worked for a company with really tight security, and he could only log into the remote desktop whatsit through some insanely old and rickety version of internet explorer, I think version 4. It was apparently the best version for strapping down the security on.
posted by phunniemee at 11:03 AM on June 14, 2013
posted by phunniemee at 11:03 AM on June 14, 2013
Yes, I sometimes work from home and have to use IE 6 (on an old desktop running XP) to be able to connect.
posted by essexjan at 11:44 AM on June 14, 2013
posted by essexjan at 11:44 AM on June 14, 2013
All good advice but we need more information. It sounds like you're connecting via a web-based SSL VPN, but if you could verify that, that would be great.
Turn off windows firewall
Definitely try it from somewhere else (friends house / coffee shop) - I'm 99% sure that will work, and then you can move on to your home network to troubleshoot.
Ping test > eliminate devices > disable all firewalls > change IP scheme (if it's a smaller company, they could use a 192.168.x.x like gatorbiddy said, which is typical consumer config, and effectively ruins VPN if conflicted).
posted by unktone at 12:54 PM on June 14, 2013
Turn off windows firewall
Definitely try it from somewhere else (friends house / coffee shop) - I'm 99% sure that will work, and then you can move on to your home network to troubleshoot.
Ping test > eliminate devices > disable all firewalls > change IP scheme (if it's a smaller company, they could use a 192.168.x.x like gatorbiddy said, which is typical consumer config, and effectively ruins VPN if conflicted).
posted by unktone at 12:54 PM on June 14, 2013
Do you know the IP? Can you ping it from terminal?
posted by oceanjesse at 1:22 PM on June 14, 2013
posted by oceanjesse at 1:22 PM on June 14, 2013
Do you know how to look at the Windows Event Log? Start->Run->compmgmt.msc->EventWiewer. Look in application and system logs for events with a red icon. Discuss with IT.
posted by theora55 at 1:26 PM on June 14, 2013
posted by theora55 at 1:26 PM on June 14, 2013
Response by poster: Sorry all, got a bit derailed with other stuff. She tried directly connecting to the modem, with no success, and at this point rather than being a conduit and not being able to see what's happening first hand, I'm going to wait until I get off work and try some of this stuff so I can see exactly what's going on. Thanks for your suggestions, and I'll report back once I get a handle on what the deal is (and if there's anything else that might help in the meantime, feel free to chime in)
posted by pdb at 1:26 PM on June 14, 2013
posted by pdb at 1:26 PM on June 14, 2013
Pinging the IP is a good call in the future because it lets you know which end the problem is on. If you ping it and get a response, the remote computer is on, and the problem is on your end. If you ping it and do not get a response, the problem is on their end (and maybe also on your end, but not necessarily). Sometimes it just means that the remote computer is off in which case you have a hardware problem, not a software problem.
posted by oceanjesse at 1:49 PM on June 14, 2013
posted by oceanjesse at 1:49 PM on June 14, 2013
Response by poster: Connecting directly to the modem eliminated the problem, so now it's off to try some of the router fixes y'all suggested. Thanks again, everybody.
posted by pdb at 11:23 AM on June 17, 2013
posted by pdb at 11:23 AM on June 17, 2013
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posted by pdb at 10:18 AM on June 14, 2013