Archive for Virtual private network

HotFix for Error 692 On Win 7 x64

Posted by Philippe on
August 18th, 2010 |
0 Comments
Categories : Computers & Softwares Internet Safety

Wireless ap outdoor

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L2TP VPN Issues – Intermittent errors resolved by reboot

I start having this error soon after installing a secure VPN software (Anonymizer Universal). Working from the cottage using an Wi-Fi access points as my internet connection, I got this error a lot and it was driving me crazy.

I noticed that it was happening when the connection was not stable. By that, I mean that I had some latency issues between my antenna and the rest of the network. You can determine the latency “quality” by doing a ping. The ping test will measure the time it takes for a fix quantity of data (a packet) to travel from your PC to the chosen location and back. To find the latency problem I have used the ping test done from PingTest.net. I also used a little software made by IP_Switch named WS_Ping ProPack. While testing, I would get pings as high as 2 seconds! Just to compare, using my cable connection, I get pings of around 10 to 20 ms (milliseconds). The ping time was fluctuating a lot so the VPN connection was dropping a lot, to the point where I would need to reboot my laptop every 5 minutes.

If the VPN tries to “reconnect” to often, you will get an error from Windows as it will be unable to reestablish the VPN connection.

The full error I would get was: “Hardware failure in port or attached device”.

You can fix this by reboot but this reboot solution is more annoying than a real fix.

Since rebooting my laptop every 5 minutes was not an option, I search the web for a better solution to this problem.

I’m glad to tell you that I have found a solution for the error 692. It is a HotFix from Microsoft and it works! After having installed the HotFix, the 692 error is a thing of the past. Sure, I still get deconnected once in a while but now I can simply restart my VPN and it works.

** You can find the Microsoft HotFix using this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980399/en-us

If you have any comments or questions regarding this article, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Using Public Wi-Fi Hotspots?

Posted by Philippe on
July 31st, 2010 |
1 Comment
Categories : Internet Safety

Working on your laptop using free Wi-Fi Hotspots from the local coffee shop?

Using Public Wi Fi Hotspots

You just love your laptop! You take it with you everywhere you go. Now that you can have a Wi-Fi connection almost anywhere, there is no need to stay secluded in your house working those long hours alone… right?

You tough that having a firewall and an anti-virus software installed on your laptop meant that you where safe surfing at those WiFi access points (or hotspots). Boy are you wrong!

It is in fact not so hard for someone with the right knowledge and some free open source software to see what you are doing (and everybody else using the same connection) on the web while surfing using your wireless connection.

They can capture your login information from Facebook, Gmail or your credit card number when you do an online transaction. Your laptop becomes a plain pen for hackers.

A hacker could be sitting right next to you at your local coffee shop. He could be “sniffing” the Wi Fi network and stealing people information.

The easiest way to protect yourself is by using a secure VPN. It will encrypt your connection thus making it unreadable to other. Maybe your employer has a VPN setup on there server, if so, use it. You can also find some good online service that will provide 128 or 256-bit encryption. Some of them are complicated and not so easy to setup if you’re not a computer geek!

The easiest on you could install and use is a software called Anonymizer Universal. It is a simple software that you install on your Windows, Mac OS or iPop/iPhone/iPad. It will encrypt all of your internet traffic. From your email software, your weather or stocks reader on your desktop to your browser. The only thing you have to setup is the install of the software and your user name and password. That’s it! It will even rotate your IP address every 24 hours.

There are some other option like Identity Cloaker. This one is more versatile but at the same time, a little more complicated to use (actually, not much). Identity Cloaker is at the time of writing, only for Windows machine!

It will also only protect your browser traffic so if you are using an email software like Outlook, it will not encrypt your email data. At this time, there are 13 servers with 142 IPs in 8 countries in the Identity Cloaker network! You can connect to any one of them and even have Identity Cloaker rotate between all the server at any given time interval!

Using those 2 service will assure you a safe and secure surfing experience.

I have chosen to write about Anonymizer and Identity Cloaker because they are the software I personally use on my laptop. There support service are excellent and there software top quality.

If you do any work on the road, you really need to protect yourself and those 2 software are your safest choice.