This is my short love and hate story with Cisco wireless routers during past few months. It all started when I decided to switch my Comcast economy broadband service to AT&T uVerse. The decision was mainly driven by the need to watch web videos and youtube on my TV flawlessly(no buffering) and I was having happy moments until my laptop crashed with blue screen better know as Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). The reason was failing agnfilt.sys driver.Initially I thought it is with Cisco E1000 router as I never had this problem with Comcast or AT&T DSL before. But being a logical troubleshooter, I said to myself, an external device should not bring your computer down to the knees so it must be my laptop operating system problem. Thinking on that line, I did everything possible such as isolating VPN client software version, using another laptop with same and another windows version on my home network, all resulted to the same problem. Sometimes, it will crash as soon as I start firefox browser giving me impression that mozilla software is transmitting a packet that causes this BSOD. Searching on google did not provide any good pointer either.
Guess...what I did, bought a used Netgear router from eBay and walla, the BSOD problem disappeared. This solidified my idea that its Cisco router that has problem with uVerse. I am not a networking professional, so I can only logically troubleshoot networking problem from symptoms and basically use isolation techniques.
Netgear router was working fine as far as my laptop is concerned but it had buffering issues with Netflix and youtube. So I decided to take another chance and buy an advance Cisco router E2500. Performed very well in video streaming services but boom got the same BSOD in less than 5 minutes of connecting with my VPN.
This time I decided to monitor Cisco bulletin board closely and see if I have brothers out there sharing the same pain. There were few posts and Cisco support was shooting them down with their theory that external network devices would never bring your system down so the problem lies in your windows/hardware and not in their router. The discussion went on passionately and patiently with no outcome until some user suggested to change the Network services settings in the AT&T VPN software to Managed VPN - SSL Dual Access. This indeed has fixed my problem, see screen shot below, in case you have the same problem and wonder what and how to change. At end, all is well, question is why Cisco router does not support IPSec Dual Access or Standard Dual Access service? Is Cisco router more secure? I am researching my answer currently and will post when I know concrete answer. Good day !
Guess...what I did, bought a used Netgear router from eBay and walla, the BSOD problem disappeared. This solidified my idea that its Cisco router that has problem with uVerse. I am not a networking professional, so I can only logically troubleshoot networking problem from symptoms and basically use isolation techniques.Netgear router was working fine as far as my laptop is concerned but it had buffering issues with Netflix and youtube. So I decided to take another chance and buy an advance Cisco router E2500. Performed very well in video streaming services but boom got the same BSOD in less than 5 minutes of connecting with my VPN.
This time I decided to monitor Cisco bulletin board closely and see if I have brothers out there sharing the same pain. There were few posts and Cisco support was shooting them down with their theory that external network devices would never bring your system down so the problem lies in your windows/hardware and not in their router. The discussion went on passionately and patiently with no outcome until some user suggested to change the Network services settings in the AT&T VPN software to Managed VPN - SSL Dual Access. This indeed has fixed my problem, see screen shot below, in case you have the same problem and wonder what and how to change. At end, all is well, question is why Cisco router does not support IPSec Dual Access or Standard Dual Access service? Is Cisco router more secure? I am researching my answer currently and will post when I know concrete answer. Good day !
