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Google Wifi Network

Google WiFi Blocking FortiGate SSL VPN Connections

I personally think that Google Mesh is great for non-techie people and the coverage area on one of these little access points are great! HOWEVER, I am a techie person

So back at the start of this whole Self-Isolation/Social Distancing thing started almost everyone was forced to work from home. During this time a lot of people started to notice issues that they never had before such as, being unable to connect to their Work VPN from their home WiFi. A few years ago I purchased a Google WiFi Wireless Mesh (I think it is now called Nest Wifi??) so my family would stop complaining about their wireless signal dropping as they walked throughout the house. I know I should have gone with something better like a Ubiquiti system, but I just didn’t have the infrastructure at the time. Anyway the Google WiFi had been working well for us, well with the exception of my Razer laptop which I posted about a while ago, but the rest of the family was fine with it. So my work uses Cisco AnyConnect SSL VPN which works like a champ. However I have a few clients that use Google Wifi in their homes, and also use Fortigate for their work VPN. They started complaining that they were unable to connect to their VPN and that it would get to about 10 % and just fail.

I was asked to look at a few of them and I discovered that the issue only exists with the Wireless connection. When you hardwire your laptop via an ethernet cable it will connect just fine which is very strange. I did some google searching recently and I discovered that “we” were not the only ones having this issue.

It would appear via this Reddit thead that the issue is resolved with a newer version of Firmware. So just for context the thread says that they are running 12371.52.22 ( oddly enough the same version we are all running) and they are eventually able to get their firmware to 12871. 57.12 which appears to be a later version that what “we” have running.

If you are not aware about Google Wifi (or Nest Wifi) they are supposed to be a 0 Administration Wireless Mesh setup, meaning aside from their app that you can install on your phone or tablet there is not much you can do to administer these devices. I personally think that Google Mesh is great for non-techie people and the coverage area on one of these little access points are great! HOWEVER, I am a techie person and I found the product to be very limiting as Google manages everything and a techie person would like to tinker with, including firmware updates.

According to that Redditor (I guess that is what you call them) the firmware update was applied to his router and he is now up and running. Lord only know how he managed to get it applied and there does not appear to be a way to request it. At this point I am stumped but I will keep you posted of any updates as they come.

I hope you found this post helpful and if you did please tell your friends. We are on a new site now and could use all the help we can get!

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