VPN Network Routing Step-by-Step

Here is a quick step-by-step tutorial on VPN routing. The purpose is to give you access to the VPN network and the local network at the same time (by default it locks you out of your local network and you can only access the remote network).

Step 1: Create a VPN connection

Frankly, if you can’t get this far, you should probably turn back now or seek additional help.

Step 2: Modify gateway usage

Go to the Networking tab of the connection properties and select “IPv4″:

Next, click the “Properties” button:

Next click the “Advanced” button:

Uncheck, the “Use default gateway on remote network” and “automatic metric” If I remember correctly, the automatic metric is new in Vista and will not appear in Windows XP. If that is the case, just uncheck the “Use default gateway on remote network”

Step 3: Save the connection and/or connect to the network

The final thing to do is to re-route traffic using one of 2 scripts. The Widows XP version of this script works without much (or any) tweaking. Depending on your network you might need to modify the name of the connection:

Toward the bottom of the script in section that loops over all the connections you will see this:

if instr(data(n), “PPP adapter”) then…

The text “PPP adapter” might need to be modified for your connection (i.e. “PPP adapter CFWT”)

The Windows Vista version of this script is essentially the same except I’ve modified the search criteria slightly. It no longer looks for “IP Address” because Vista can use IP version 4 AND version 6 the text is “IPv4 Address”. The Vista version also has 2 files, the route_fix.vbs file which does the actual routing and a route_fix.bat. The purpose of the two files is that elevated privileges are necessary to modify routing in Vista. Right click on the .bat file and select “Run as Administrator” and it will in turn run the .vbs file as administrator.

Note: The .bat file assumes that you have placed the files together in a folder on your desktop called “batch files”. If that needs to change you’ll need to edit the .bat file with the appropriate path.

Here are those scripts:

• Route Fix (XP version)
• Route Fix (Vista version)