Cisco – VPN (PPTP) connects successfully but unable to ping some devices in the LAN

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My working company has this router (Cisco RV042G Gigabit Dual WAN VPN Router) and it has the IP 192.168.1.1 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0. It has 3 devices directly connected to its LAN ports, an ASUS access point 192.168.1.245, a D-Link access point 192.168.1.246 and a network printer 192.168.1.247.

I have setup the VPN (PPTP) in the Cisco router in the IP range of 192.168.1.253 - 192.168.1.254. And this range is excluded from the Cisco router DHCP range.

From my home computer (physical line directly connected to the modem), I can connect to the company Cisco router successfully and gets assigned the IP 192.168.1.253. I can ping the Cisco router and the network printer without any problem. However, I cannot ping the two access points and cannot access their web admin interface.

I try to ping them from the Cisco router and find that they can respond the ping request. So I can confirm that the Cisco router can actually reach them. Also, other computer hosts in the company can access the internet through these two access points without any problem. And they can ping and access the web admin interface of these two access points.

I also tried to turn off the firewall in the Cisco router to make sure it's not the cause but it still does not solve the problem.

So why can't my home computer ping and access the web admin interface of the access points when it's connected by VPN?

Best Answer

This is because the source address you are using to connect is in a different subnet and/or the APs don't allow packets having more than one hop. To circumvent this you should:

  1. Connect to the AP via some workstation on the LAN, by getting the remote desktop and using a web browser. This is pretty much the silver bullet.
  2. If you can't do the above, configure the default gateway on the AP, so it'll send the the traffic originating form outside the LAN to the router (yes, I'm aware of the address scheme you gave, and this will probably not work, because of ARP at play rather than IP routing)
  3. If this doesn't work, enable the remote access/remote management (or whatever it is called in your AP) in your APs.

Also, the question is, are you going to access those APs on regular basis, or is it just a once-in-a-while configuration?

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