Wow, where do I start? I was called in to help a customer set up a small network where a few external users will be accessing a production server via the ssl vpn client inclulded with the DSR-500N. The customer had decided upon and ordered this router without consulting us first (probably wouldn't have sold them a D-Link to be honest). Sat the unit behind an modem and got Internet working easily enough and proceeded to configure VPN access. This is where all fun ceased to exist.
The SSL VPN portal and client are terrible. Repeat... terrible. The default portal didn't work once enabled. Following the guide instead, I created a "test" tunnel, created a dummy user and it didn't work either. However, the default portal suddenly started working. Okay! Deleted the "test" portal and try the default portal afterwards. Fail. Oh well, I'll just create another new one and everything will be okay, right? Wrong. Now those of you who know the model will say, oh, you didn't have remote management enabled and that's why the default portal didn't work. I skimmed enough of the manual before I started to have a clue and I didn't miss that. Nor did the fact that the URL is case-sensitive throw me off. It just flat didn't work.... and that includes 64-bit Internet Explorer which is apparently the only version of IE that works with this client. WTF?
Anyway, couple o' tries and I called tech support. To D-Link's credit, I got a live body who knew what he was about pretty quick. Went over the usual with him... latest firmware, check. Remote management, check. New user, new group, new portal, check. Working? NO. Took him a few minutes of looking around to confirm that my config was okay. Eventually, he created a new user and a new portal which happened to work, much like my "test" portal work for a while. Now, the customer is using this portal until I can get them some answers and I'm hoping people in this forum can help since there's litte to no support info online and certainly nothing in depth.
Does anybody know why the SSL VPN portals on these units are so picky? Is there something I may be missing? Will the VPN client work with anything other than 64-bit IE? I've tried Firefox without any luck. The portal is not very user friendly and it doesn't look like it can be configured (would be nice to remove some of the redundant / irrelevant stuff the customer won't be using). Hate to tell the customer they should have called me first (which they should have) but running out of options short of replacing this with a similar unit of another make that I know works and is considerably less hassle to run an SSL VPN from. Since this customer likes D-Link and pays me to figure this stuff out, I thought it was worth leaving a question here since D-Link tech support dropped me like a hot rock once the portal they made allowed us to log in.
Anyway, just wanna see what kind of response I get. Thanks in advance.... -bp
