Router Config

I have a Linksys wrt54g router, and was looking at the security settings in the web based configuration... For some reason under VPN, it had:

IPSec Passthrough
PPTP Passthrough and
L2TP Passthrough

all enabled.

I have no need for VPN that I can think of... in fact I really don't know all that much about it other than the basics... does anyone see a problem with disabling these services? I have one wired system, and one wireless system connected to this router... Any help or explanation would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Westin

Those don't enable a VPN on your router. They enable the ability to create a VPN tunnel through your router. So, if you use a VPN to connect to your work, then you need to keep this enabled. I recently had a problem where I was unable to create a tunnel from a 802.11n wifi router I was connected to. The problem ended up being an issue with the vpn passthrough feature. The vendor didn't patch the firmware yet, so I had to put my machine in the DMZ in order to use my VPN client. The DMZ in this case was still on a private network... the wireless was just segmented from the wired devices.

Quote:

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You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to phishphreek again.

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Thanks Phish ... That explains a lot. :)

Some VPN protocols aren't NAT 'aware'. 2 ways to solve it, use a protocol thats NAT 'aware' or let the router/firewall modify the packet. These settings allow the router to modify the VPN IP inside a packet. So it NATs the original packet (as normal NAT does) and it NATs the VPN packet inside it.

I could be completely off the mark here, but mainly what I was wondering was, should I disable these settings if I have no need for them? I have always thought, the fewer services, the better...

There's no service as there is nothing listening.. But you can turn it off if you don't use it.