VPN Madness

So we've got this client that has a reputation as many of them do around here. This reputation means that when they say "jump," you ask "how high?" The trouble with them is that they are what is known as a Turnkey, meaning they host our application on their own server, and if they have issues, we have to connect to their server over a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. This connection is established in a variety of ways, but typically via an actual application on a local machine here that connects through an IP address or via a web-based version of the same thing, though these web based connections work in a variety of ways, and those ways are not always ... hm ... friendly. This client has one of these unfriendly web based connections.

I thoroughly understand the need for security and such, but some people go way, way overboard with the idea of security. What these people have set up on this connection is the installation of an application along with a "cleaner" that runs on your browser's history once you close out the connection. I'm not sure what caused my problems yesterday within all of this, but it was a comfort to hear from Optimus Prime that I wasn't the first person to have this problem.

Bottom line is that this client's web based VPN crashed my connection (both internet and intranet) once I was done in their server and ran their stupid cleanup utility. Typically, I login to servers using a Virtual machine that I access from my desktop, since a lot of these turnkey connections kill all connectivity except to their server until you're done, and using this virtual machine allows me to maintain my connectivity while connecting into their machine as well. It amounts to me connecting to a virtual machine desktop to connect through a virtual network to get to the desktop of their server.

On this occasion, I had to make a quick change and the virtual machine was being used by someone else. I hadn't ever had problems with them before, so I just connected to them assuming I'd just lose my local connectivity for a little bit. Once I disconnected, I lost connectivity to everything. I had to do a system restore back to Monday in order to get anything to work again, and even then, I had to clear my history, cookies, and everything before some of my web-based apps would work at all.

I actually did two restores. The first was back to when their application was installed, and I waited 45 minutes for the restore before I finally turned off my machine and rebooted it only to restore it back to the restore point created at the end of the day on Monday. Finally, I was back on track, but it took me about 2 hours to recover from this VPN connection. 

Once my connection was back, though, I had an email waiting from them to update one more thing. I thought to my, "oh, the audacity!" Obviously, I used the virtual machine that time, and all was well in my world.