Frequent reconnects - no "allow" prompt in macOS preference page

[suleyman44]

Since I got the AnyConnect 4.9.02028 upgrade pushed to my macOS 10.15.7 I have a persistent issue that the connection becomes unusable (the client thinks it is connected but no comminication happens). During an 8.6 hour test in which I tried a single ping one per second, 22564 succeeded, 8250 failed. The state of connectivity changed 150 times during this period. Average "down" time was about 110 seconds.

Prior to this update I could remain connected for days without a dropped connection.

I think the problem may have to do with the permissions because i get two prompts when I reboot that tellms to allow the extension. But when I go to the preferences there is nothing to allow.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the software with reboot in the middle several times but it is always the same. I get the prompts but no way to allow the extension. Interestingly the larger image/dialog below pops up when the system is being shut down again as well.

When I look at the extension installed and sort by "obtained from" I see the following that shows everything that is non-apple. I see nothing about Cisco there.

And the only entry in the "Disabled Software" group is "RW72P2PQ8E - com.asix.driver.ax88179-178a" which is a network drive not currently in use.

As an additionl test, I connected to VPN and pinged the corporate DNS server. The result was 32% packet loss:

64177 packets transmitted, 43514 packets received, 32.2% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 6.422/5506.832/194053.359/18064.073 ms

Also worth noting, every time I reboot the machine, I see the prompt above that tells me I need to go to system preferences to allow the extension but there is never anything to allow there.

I would appreciate any suggestions on how to try to fix this.

Thank you!  

[suleyman44 · Accepted solution]

Ugly but I found a solution. In case someone else runs into the issue maybe this post will help.

It turns out the problem is with the acsock extension. VPN works fine for a while even in its absence but causes frequent drops in communication. I do not know what caused it to end up in the a state of being "allowed" but not "loaded" as seen in the screenshot of my original question. I am fairly certain the upgrade pushed from the VPN server caused it. Regardless, uninstall/reinstall sequences did not bring that extension to the correct state.

I ended up reinistalled the OS and restoring my files from a TimeMachine backup. I then got the "Allow" prompt for "Cisco" in the system preferences dialog and all is well now. acsock entry shows as "notirized" and "loaded".