Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Avaya VPN Client Release 10.04.109 for Windows 7

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Avaya has released version 10.04.109 of their VPN client that supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7. This single client supports the following operating systems (in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions);

  • Windows XP
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows 7

The following issues have been identified and resolved according the the release notes;

  • wi00875648 – Certificates with UTF-8 encoded issuer name can’t be selected.
  • wi00875671 – Sometimes users might get “Unhandled exception” error when trying to select a certificate or display its details.
  • wi00875676 – Pre-application launch command line not saved properly.

In the past I attempted to host the client files and I quickly ate through my 40 GB/monthly quota on my host. I’m going to attempt to-do this again however I will most likely change the URL from time to time to guarantee that people aren’t hot-linking to it.

I may also restrict access to only ARIN based IP addresses, again I’ll have to see how things go the second time around.

Cheers!

Updated Saturday May 7, 2011

I’ve added MD5 hashes for both the files.

Updated Tuesday September 20, 2011

Avaya has release version 10.05.100 which can be found here, I’m going to close comments on this post.

Avaya VPN Client Release 10.04.108 for Windows 7

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Avaya has released version 10.04.108 of their VPN client that supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7. This single client supports the following operating systems (in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions);

  • Windows XP
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows 7

The new client is now rebranded as the Avaya VPN Client, although the installation routine still bears the name “Nortel VPN Client” in the title bar and the desktop icon created by the installation gets the label “Nortel VPN Client”. The new client also supports a (completely) quiet installation;

Previously, when users install the client, they need to acknowledge UAC prompts before the installation can continue. If they do not want the UAC prompts to show up, they would have to manually install Avaya certificate to the Trusted Publisher store, or check on the “Always trust software from Avaya Inc.” during earlier installation NVC. In this release, a new option is introduced that the procedure can be automated. To use it, users will need to pass in “TrustAvaya=TRUE” (the “TRUE” must be in uppercase) to the installer at command line (in administrative context). For example,

C:\NVC32-10.04.108.exe /S /v”/qn TrustAvaya=TRUE”

or

C:\msiexec /i “Nortel VPN Client.msi” /qn TrustAvaya=TRUE

There are quite a few bugs resolved in this release including the following;

  • wi00568576 Wireless users are disconnected intermittently. IPSec users which are behind a wireless cable modem are disconnected intermittently. Users are able to authenticate successfully, but after some time they get disconnected and the client pops up the message “VPN tunnel is disconnected due to routing table change”. This is because the operating system changes the metric of wireless interface according to various parameters when Automatic Metric option is enabled. This is the default configuration for network interfaces in Windows. This causes the client to consider that the routing tabled has been hacked and disconnects the tunnel.
  • wi00595275 Screen Saver policy enforced at user level only. End user machine’s screen saver settings can be enabled at user level or group level (via Active Directory group policy). When the VPN client enforces the screen saver policy (pushed from server), it only checks the user level setting.
  • wi00595280 Unable to ping the local interface after a tunnel is disconnected. The issue occurs on Windows Vista/7 with mandatory tunneling only.
  • wi00666178 Inaccurate message when the QOTD banner message is not received. If the quote-of-the-day banner message gets lost (due to networking issue), the tunneling attempt failed with error message of “User did not acknowledge the banner”, which may confuse users. The message has been reworded as “The banner message from the VPN Router was not received, or the user didn’t acknowledge the banner. Please contact your Network Administrator or Helpdesk for assistance.”
  • wi00823633 On Windows XP the client fails to start if only Microsoft .NET 4.0 is available. On machines that have only .NET Framework v4.0 but no v3.5 or earlier versions available, the client fails to start.
  • wi00840078 Local IP address is unreachable on Windows 7. On Windows 7/Vista, when a tunnel is up (in mandatory tunneling mode), the local host IP address is not accessible.
  • wi00595473 Preconfigured profiles were not displayed in some cases.
  • wi00841234 NVC GUI takes very long time to launch up when using IPSec profiles having saved passwords.
  • wi00827126 Certificate based SSL tunneling fails when EACA (NHA/TG) is enabled. When Avaya EAC Agent (formerly Nortel Health Agent or TunnelGuard) is enabled, certificate-based SSL tunneling attempt will fail with error of “Banner fetching failed.”
  • wi00830401 On Windows 7/Vista the DNS settings for the VPN connection is not used if the connection is through a mobile broadband card connection. It’s an issue with the operating system’s DNS resolution. Please use Microsoft’s workaround described here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311218
  • wi00841109 Occasionally tunneling attempts may fail with error of “Activating VPN adapter failed” error is displayed.
  • wi00841089 Sometimes the log clear function doesn’t work. The log shows there are query errors.

A number of readers posted comments to the previous software release, Nortel VPN Client Release 10.04.016, around the first issue above where users were getting disconnected with the following message; VPN tunnel is disconnected due to routing table change. If you don’t feel like upgrading the client you can implement a workaround provided by a reader.

You can find the complete release notes right here.

You can find the client software on the Avaya support website.

I’m going to make the AVC software available here unless I’m contacted by Avaya.

NVC64-10.04.108.exe (64bit)
NVC32-10.04.108.exe (32bit)

Cheers!

Updated Sunday April 10, 2011

I can no longer host the Avaya VPN client software do to the enormous bandwidth utilization on my host. In addition there are just too many people abusing my gesture. I had a single IP address from China download the client software so many times that it consumed 10GB of bandwidth.

Juniper SSL VPN Secure Access 6.5R2 Available – Windows 7

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Juniper has released a new version of software for their SSL VPN (Secure Access) appliances. The new release, 6.5R2, hopefully corrects all the issues and heartache that 6.5R1 brought to Juniper’s customers. I won’t rehash the issues that we discovered in 6.5R1, if you haven’t heard about them you can go read the earlier posts on the subject;

I will be testing 6.5R2 on a spare SA4000 appliance (waiting for an evaluation license key from Juniper) and will share my results with everyone here.

You can find the release notes for 6.5R2 here.

Windows 7

When will Juniper Network’s SSL VPN (SA platform/IVE OS) support Microsoft’s Windows 7 OS as a supported client platform? You can refer to Juniper knowledge base article, KB13195.

Juniper states that “Microsoft Windows 7 is qualified” (not supported) on 6.5R2 and there should be no major issues aside from the know caveats/issues.

Known Issues/Caveats:

* All client components:

  1. 1. Unable to install (or) launch client component using IE8 (64 bit). This is expected as IE8 (64 bit) browser is not supported. Please use IE8 (32 bit) to avoid this issue. (470316)

* EndPoint Integrity:

  1. When using IE 8 on 64-bit Windows 7 the reason string is not available when a patch assessment policy fails. (485421)

* Secure Virtual Workspace (SVW):

  1. When opening a file with Windows Photo Viewer inside SVW, the file is shown on the real desktop rather than inside the SVW session. (447409)
  2. On Windows 7, saving a MS Office 2003 file inside SVW fails. (486104)
  3. On Windows 7, Control Panel is accessible inside SVW even if it is disabled under application to allow list. (486104)

* WSAM:

  1. If Kaspersky Anti-Virus Version 2009 (8.0.0.506) is installed on a Windows 7 (OR) Windows Vista computer, WSAM will not be able to intercept and secure traffic. This issue is not seen with older versions of Kaspersky Anti-Virus (434715).

Cheers!

Update: January 6, 2009

I should point out that I’ve discovered that JSAM will not launch properly with Windows 7 (64-bit) when running 6.5R1 software. I initially thought it might have something to-do with the 32-bit/64-bit versions of Internet Explorer or the 32-bit/64-bit versions of the Java Runtime Environment. I tested the same machine today with 6.5R2 and it worked fine using the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer. I didn’t try the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer. So it would appear the problem is resolved in 6.5R2 software, please see the forums for additional details.

Juniper SSL VPN Secure Access 6.5 Available

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juniper-logoJuniper recently released a new version of software for their SSL VPN (Secure Access) appliances. The new release is important because it finally addresses a problem that was original documented on my blog in this post. While I have yet to deploy this new software release (I would be interested in hearing from those that have) I thought it warranted a new post.

This latest version of software now supports Windows Secure Application Manager (WSAM) when used on Windows XP 64-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit clients. There was no mention of Windows 7 which is due to be released October 22, 2009. I did find it interesting that Internet Explorer 8 was only “compatible” with respect to a few of the features while Internet Explorer 7 was “qualified” with all features (review Juniper Secure Access 6.5 Supported Platforms document for specifics). I did a quick search over in the Juniper forums and found some reports that Host Checker wasn’t working properly with Windows 7 RC.

There were two new features that jumped out at me in the What’s New document;

RDP Launcher

SA 6.5 simplifies the use of RDP sessions for end users without requiring them or administrators to create bookmarks.

  • Simplifies ease of use for remote users to RDP into remote desktops by merely clicking a button or entering a hostname or IP Address of the remote computer.
  • Simplifies the configuration for administrators and reduces the number of support calls from users who are unable to figure out how to RDP to remote computers.

VDI Support

Secure Access (SA) version 6.5 interoperates with VDI products, including VMWare’s View Manager and Citrix’s XenDesktop, enabling administrators to deploy virtual desktops alongside the SA series of SSL VPN devices. This allows the SA administrator to configure centralized remote access policies for users who access their virtual desktops.

  • This provides a centralized point of configuration for administrators to configure remote access policies for virtual desktop access through leading virtualization products from VMWare and Citrix.
  • SA 6.5 provides end users the VDI client to access the virtual desktop through, and provides flexible client fallback options thereby simplifying the deployment and management for administrators.

We have a lot of folks looking to access their corporate desktops remotely and the RDP (Terminal Services) feature of the Juniper SSL VPN really helps fill that role.

Cheers!

References;

What’s New in Juniper Networks Secure Access (SA) SSL VPN Version 6.5
Juniper Secure Access 6.5 Release Notes
WSAM and Network Connect Error Messages Release 6.5
Juniper Secure Access 6.5 Support Platforms

Update: Thursday November 5, 2009

Let me get right to the point, I would not recommend anyone deploy 6.5R1 on their Juniper Secure Access appliances. There are known issues with the Juniper Windows Secure Application Manager (WSAM) and the following four security suites; Norton 360, Symantec AntiVirus, Zone Alarm Security, ESET NOD32. Users with Norton 360 could experience a blue screen of death (BSOD) using the Juniper Windows Secure Application Manager. Juniper has a hotfix available for 6.5R1 that resolves the BSOD issues with Norton 360. The hotfix is not generally available on the Juniper website so you must contact JTAC for the hotfix.

Additional information can be found at this post; http://blog.michaelfmcnamara.com/2009/10/norton-360-and-juniper-ssl-vpn-wsam/

Update: Friday September 19, 2009

A quick update… I’ve setup a spare SA4000 and received a demo license from Juniper to test the 6.5R1 software release (thanks Matt!). I’m happy to report that the upgrade on the appliance was very smooth although it took about 6 minutes for the appliance to boot back up giving me a few frightful thoughts. Unfortunately the same can’t be said of the client software. I’m still in the process of testing but it appears that non-Administrator users (users that don’t have Administrator rights on the PC) won’t be functional after the upgrade until an Administrator manually installs the latest and greatest Juniper Installer Service. The Juniper Installer Service is designed to allow the client software to upgrade when the user doesn’t have Administrator rights. Users with Administrator rights work fine so long as they answer the prompts to install the new version of the Juniper Installer Service. I hope to release a detailed post in the next few days including some testing of Windows Vista 64-bit desktops.

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