VPN Client 4 A and D windows 2000 XP and Stateful firewall

[garyprice]

I have noticed an issue with "Stateful firewall(always on) option on the 4.x A,D versions of the vpn client for windows 2000 and xp. What I found was the firewall contiuned to protect the system on the local network as long as the service:service CISCO Systems Inc,VPN Service was running. All connection requests to the system were dropped even after I had exited from the VPN Client application.

When I stopped the server:service on the local workstation connecting from a remote system started working again...

I looked at the server:services CISCO Systmes, Inc, VPN Service and saw that it was setup to launch automatically.

I would only run the service when I was going to make a VPN connection. Do not run a service unless you need to use it.

[gfullage]

This is exactly how the Always On feature is supposed to work, always on, regardless of whether the VPN is up or not. It's designed as an additional security feature that comes inbuilt with the client. If you don't want it to always be on, then don't select it from the menu, then it will only be on when the VPN is up. You don't need to go to the trouble of stopping the service to turn it off.