Fiber1 on BT Hub6 - Issue connecting to NHS VPN (Global Connect)

[hcarpe1977]

Hi, A little bit of an odd one, I think. 

I have done a lot of searching and reading, and have seriously considered buying a third party modem/hub but that just seems wrong somehow. 

As per the subject, I have the Fiber1 product and the BT Hub6. Until Dec last year, everything has worked as expected.

My wife works for the NHS. She continues to work from home. Up until December last year we had no issues.

Then at the start of this year she has had serious problems "using" the NHS VPN. The original symptoms were that the VPN client would connect, and then there would be no access to NHS resources (within the vpn) or external resources (such as the BBC website or Google website). 

When the laptop was disconnected from the VPN the public sites would be accessible. 

Must be the VPN right? ..... 

My wife took the laptop into the NHS and the tech guys looked at it. They could find no problem, and it worked for them. 

I have multiple devices, I use a VPN for my work and there have been no other issues that I am aware of. 

This causes a lot of stress, and in an effort to prove it was the VPN on the laptop, I enabled the hotshot on my phone to share its internet connection, fully expecting the laptop to connect to the network and then start failing to access internal and external resources again. ...

Unfortunately, and the reason for this essay, it connected fine, AND could access internal and external resources totally fine. 

I have repeated this test multiple times, the laptop fails to access resources via the VPN, but only when connected to the Hub6. (WiFi or cable).

I have checked the hub has the latest software. I have changed various settings. I 'think' I have even added the laptop to a/the DMZ. None of these things have resolved the issue. 

Any ideas would be very much appreciated. 

Henry.

[rbz5416]

Are Parental Controls &/or Web Protect enabled? If so try disabling them & see if that helps. If not, try a factory reset of the Hub.

[RobbieBaron]

It's never wrong to get a generic router instead of the cheapo low functionality routers that ISPs push out!

[hcarpe1977]

At the moment,

Port clamping is on

Dynamic DNS is off

Port forwarding is off

Firewall is disabled

My wife's laptop is in the DMZ

The ALG is off

User access controls are off

What I don't understand is how a router,  any router can be interfering with the traffic once the VPN is connected. It doesn't make any sense to me. Bit 100% of the time, it fails via the hub and works on other connections such as our mobile phone tethering.

Happy to do a factory reset, I will be surprised if I haven't done that already. The hardware button or the software setting in the control panel? 

[hcarpe1977]

Just done a factory reset via the hub manager.

It seemed to reset the device, but then I have looked at the known device list and it still has every device that has ever connected to it. 

I will try the hardware reset too. 

😔

[hcarpe1977]

And now also done the factory reset via the button. 

Again, the device still knows about every device every attached to it, so I am not convinced it has worked properly. 

Testing my wife's laptop, neither has resolved the vpn issue either. 

😪

[RobbieBaron]

It does remember previously connected devices. If they are no longer connected they are greyed out. Factory resetting really just resets configurable settings.

[hcarpe1977]

Thanks Robbie.

Indeed other settings were reset, for example the firewall was re-enabled. 

A bit misleading really, not so much factory reset as more just restore default settings. 

Sadly, it didn't work.

[hcarpe1977]

Is there a way to restore previous versions of the firmware?  

[rbz5416]

BT update firmware remotely, there is no way to either upgrade or downgrade manually.

Looks like next step is a third party router.