Horrible VPN connection with Cox Business Fiber

VPN
1

We’re a small shop with less than 15 employees and we’ve been using IPSec VPN to work remotely for the past year or so with no problems - until today. Our remote staff reported that VPN was fine from 8am-9am. At 10am, users started experiencing major delays and losing VPN connection. We restarted our router at the office with no luck. Users are able to establish VPN connection but cannot browse the network once connected. It was literally crawling like 56K dial up connection or some cases worst. However, what was strange is that our normal web traffic and VoIP traffic at the the office was fine. No drops or signs of issues.

When 5pm hit, all of our remote users reported that their VPN connection is running normal again with no issues. I immediately suspected that it was probably because our Node/circuit was saturated with the influx of remote workers from neighboring businesses. Opened a ticket with Cox support and awaiting for their call back.

Has anyone experienced similar issues? I’m hoping it was just an issue today and it’ll all be resolved by tomorrow.

2

Fiber doesn’t work that way. If everything else was fine, the problem was with the VPN, not the underlying network. Did you check your VPN appliance/proxy server?

3

I am on Cox business Fiber here in Omaha, NE. I didn’t have any issues during the times you specified.

You can sign up for a trial version of https://www.thousandeyes.com/. If the issue continues its GUI web tool can help pinpoint which hop upstream from your router might be the cause of your issues.

4

You say you were using your vpn for the last year - were you ALL using, ALL the time, like I suspect you are now?

I work for a state agency. Our VPN has been great until now b/c it’s suddenly overloaded.

We actually had to stand up a whole new one that doesn’t allow RDP to help load balance.

5

Happy to report no issues at all today. All staff reported no hiccups or delays all day. Lets see if tomorrow will be the same as today.

6

I dont believe its our VPN router because as mentioned it came to a crawl between 10am to 5pm yesterday and it was back to normal after working hours. Coincidence?? Additonally, we have another business (same city, different zip code) using the same VPN router via Cox cable (non-fiber) as internet with no problems. They have about 6 users working from home with no issues - so far

7

Yes, I agree but it was so slow that we made an office joke that it was faster for one of our employees to ride his bike to the office and copy the files onto his USB flash drive and ride back home.

I did take in consideration other businesses in the area having their workforce work from home as well but I just had an inkling that our node or circuit may have been overloaded or some sort of QoS/traffic shaping is taking place. I’m leaning towards the latter because normal internet browsing and VoIP traffic at the office was fine throughout the day.

8

we made an office joke that it was faster for one of our employees to ride his bike to the office and copy the files onto his USB flash drive and ride back home.

I seriously doubt they are traffic shaping VPN’s. If so you’d see ppl screaming on the torrent forums.