Sym VPN Client 7- Payload Incorrectly Formed

[sparkyputerguy]

Hi all-

I've got a stumper here... I have a client machine on my company's network that should connect to a remote Raptor VPN gateway. Whenever I try, I get the errors at the bottom of the post.

Thinking I had misconfigured this machine, I set up another machine in the same manner and still got the errors. However, if I connect that same machine to my personal ISP, it works!

Supposedly, there are no firewalls or access lists that should be blocking my traffic in or out but I'm suspicious- especially since ICMP *is* blocked at my company's perimeter. Unfortunately, I don't have access to their configs since I'm just a little person in a little office . I guess it could also be my company's ISP, but that's kind of silly...

Do you know of any utilities to ensure that the correct ports are open on routers etc. for the whole trip? I installed Firewalk (

http://www.packetfactory.net)on

my Linux box at home but I'm not sure how to configure it for this application. If I'm not mistaken, I should need IP 50, IP 51 and UDP 500. Ideally, I'd like to make sure my company's routers etc. are letting these through.

Thanks for any advice you might have!


-The VPN Client Error log (machine names and IPs edited)-

Feb 11 17:23:36.780 machinename emapi[524]: 100 nsetup Trace: Connecting security gateway remote.VPN.GW.address
Feb 11 17:23:36.800 machinename emapi[524]: 100 nsetup Trace: Retrieving configuration for gateway remote.VPN.GW.address
Feb 11 17:24:12.431 machinename isakmpd[1348]: 120 isakmpd Info: Error while processing data rcvd from peer remote.VPN.GW.address: (-3384) Payload incorrectly formed.
Feb 11 17:24:12.451 machinename isakmpd[1348]: 120 isakmpd Info: Error during isakmp sa negotiation with peer remote.VPN.GW.address, status=IKMP_ERROR err=(-3384) Payload incorrectly formed.
Feb 11 17:24:12.471 machinename isakmpd[1348]: 120 isakmpd Info: Initiator, Failed downloading tunnels with peer remote.VPN.GW.address
Feb 11 17:24:12.491 machinename emapi[524]: 400 Symantec Enterprise VPN Client Error: Communications with the ISAKMP daemon failed.
Feb 11 17:24:14.044 machinename emapi[524]: 100 nsetup Trace: Error retrieving information. Terminating connect operation to gateway remote.VPN.GW.address

 

[sparkyputerguy]

Found the cause of the problem!!!

Originally, I planned to use a SonicWall FW for my end of the tunnel- which was the "remote site" for discussion's sake. So it turns out, the "main office site" configured their VPN gateway to look for my SonicWall and a machine NAT-ed behind it.

It turns out that my SonicWall wasn't licensed for this configuration, so I opted to install the Symantec client on my machine and do away with the SonicWall. Well, even though I told the people at the "main office" it didn't register.

They sent a snippet of a logfile from a connection attempt. It still showed my source IP but it was also tied to a 192.168.x.y network that matched what I had planned to use behind the SonicWall.

About a month and a half later, they removed that configuration and I can connect successfully!