Finally an x64 Cisco VPN client

March 20, 2009 · 2 min read

As many have been complaining about for a while there appears to be no x64 version of the Cisco Systems VPN Client.  I am required to use this to connect to my network at work.  This application will only install on an x86 box and I am currently running x64 at my home.  I have no desire to switch back to x86 and was frustrated trying to locate an x64 client.  I have heard that Cisco made available a new client called AnyConnect, but have heard that this requires a new hardware device on the server side at my work (yeah, that is a non starter).  So what was I to do.

For about the last 2 months I have run a virtual machine in x86 and used the Cisco client to connect to work that way.  But is it messy and sharing disks between the machines is a real pain in the neck.  What I really wanted is an x64 client.  I was surfing the net the other day and came across the VPNC Front End.  This client claims to be x64 compatible and even to run on Windows 7, which is one of my partitions so I was truly excited.

First I downloaded version 0.7.0 and installed it on my Windows Vista x64 partition.  I setup the connection in the connection editor.  If you don’t know these parameters you are stuck.  You can select between PSK, Cert, or Hybrid mode. 

vpnconnection

Once I entered the connection settings I save them and then went to the task bar. Right click on the VPNC Front End Tray icon and selected Connect.  It took just a bit but it did successfully connect.  I am not connected to work via x64 Cisco compliant VPN client.  WOO HOO!

I then decided to try to connect via Windows 7 x64.  I installed the same client(had install with run as Administrator), made the same configuration options, and connected to the VPN.  The odd thing was that I was unable to access servers on the network due to a routing issue.  Odd for sure.  I went and found this forum entry about a version that had routing issues.  Now I could have added a pre or post script to run after the connection was complete, but I decided instead to run a previous version 0.6.15 of the VPNC Front End(available here).

image

Running version 0.6.15 on Windows 7 worked great and the routing issues were not present that had been in version 0.7.0.  A friend of mine (Evgueni) tried the same installs on Windows 2003 SP1 and found the same issues that I had with Windows 7 and version 0.7.0.  Once he installed version 0.6.15 on Windows 2003 server it worked great.

Still going to post a message about my issues with 0.7.0 in Windows 7 and Windows 2003, but no issues as of right now!

This article is part of the GWB Archives. Original Author: Eric Brown

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