VPN driving me mad

Today something different than usual Moodle ramblings ;-).

I use VPN connection on one of my projects. VPN is for Virtual private network. You can picture VPN as small, safe island in rough sea of the Internet ;-). It combines conveniences of private network - security and global network - access from anywhere, you can mount disks from server as local disks etc.

Set up VPN is fairly easy, you can see tutorial with pictures for example here. I created VPN connection without problem, only thing that bothered me (I am used to restarting IM services - skype, icq when connecting to the VPN) was annoying popup window demanding me to login to VPN even if I didn't want to use it.

It jumped on me on random moments, I noticed, that this may have something to do with problems with internet connection. If there were some hiccup when loading web pages, VPN thought there is a problem with net, jumped in to save the day...which has happened to be very bothering and unnecessary.



I am using Windows XP and Firefox 3, I tried to find where is the problem. Checked the network setting to disallow VPN to redial, checked Firefox setting for connection, but without luck. At last I found solution where I have never expected it. You have to go to Internet Explorer setting and set VPN connection to never dial. Windows thinks VPN as dial-up connection and Firefox takes this setting directly from Internet Explorer (strange, I know).



You can find how to set this up for example on this page .

I hope this will help someone with same problem, saves you some needed time, nerves and hairs :-)