Forum | Nour's Design

Pulse Secure Windows 10

Same here - Surface Pro X is supposed to be for Professionals - yet a key connectivity like pulse VPN hasn't made a version as yet. With more Windows ARM devices coming out and all high end, and pulse isn't able to keep up with these devices. Is this a case of IT departments need to start to look at other solutions not just Pulse ?

In 2014, Siris Capital acquired the Junos Pulse business from Juniper Networks and formed the standalone entity, Pulse Secure. With the mission of empowering business productivity through secure and seamless mobility, the company began a new journey to help tackle mobile-security challenges. In the same year, Pulse Secure acquired the leading mobile security provider, MobileSpaces. In 2015, Pulse Secure launched Pulse One, which provided central policy management that enabled secure access for all endpoints and mobile devices to corporate applications on-premises and in the cloud.

ET&S Telecommunications and Network Services operate and manage Virtual Private Networking allowing authorized users access to secure university networks from non-secure networks such as the internet. This will allow your computer to behave as if it were on the secure USNH network. For certain functions, even on-campus devices need to utilize the VPN to access particular resources. The VPN insures that your traffic between your machine and USNH is encrypted.

This particular VPN software, once a connection is established, will setup a new VPN virtual adapter on the host, configured on a /32 IP (e.g. 10.1.1.17/32). When that VPN is "connected", it will modify the windows host's routing table with a new preferential default gateway route entry, causing outgoing host traffic to pass through the VPN interface. The VPN software then passes encrypted packets on a particular physical device.

My next attempt was to add another bridge between the VMs and the VPN virtual adapter**, so that I could, from the VMs, also have a route to that default gateway of 10.1.1.17/32. However,this particular VPN virtual adapter** is picky, and just refuses to work if moved into a bridge. Also, in windows 10, as far as I can tell, there can only be one bridge device, so that would not have been an ideal option anyway.

Having realized that it was an L3 issue, I tried to configure my Windows 10 host to route between two subnets (VMs VPN). After all, the host is assigned an address on both the VM subnet 192.168.4.0/24 and the VPN subnet (the only such address 10.1.1.17/32). But it would seem configuring windows 10 as an actual router is a nightmare (you need Server edition).

I ended up using a software NAT to fix the issue. It turns out that windows 10 can create native NATs (no extra service or software needed). To allow a VM's traffic to flow through the VPN, I give them a vNIC on that NATted subnet, and windows takes care of forwarding that traffic with its main table, which does go through the VPN. I can also get rid of some of my bridges that way too, because when the software VPN's down (aka disconnected), traffic then just automatically reroutes to whatever other physical connection I have (wifi, or wired)!

Note on NAT limits on windows 10: I have read reports that there is a limit of 1 NAT interface on Win10, but that doesn't seem to match my personal experience. I have docker for windows installed, and it creates its own "DockerNat" interface when you install it. My custom NAT interface is able to live side by side with the DockerNat device just fine. 781b155fdc