- The EOL designation for the Cisco VPN Client v5.0.07.0440—the most recent and stable version—means that newer operating systems, like Windows 10, are not officially supported by the client.
- Luckily, a workaround exists to allow the Cisco VPN Client application to function on Windows 10 and other 64-bit versions of Windows until your organization is ready to migrate to a newer VPN.
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MAC OS 10.4 comming out soon and will break the Cico VPN client. We had a chance to test it and the Cico client can't even load. This is confirmed by Apple people.
I use multiple VPN clients, depending on which customer I am supporting on which day. I regularly use the Cisco VPN Client, the Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client, and the built-in Native Cisco VPN Support on my Mac (I’m currently running Snow Leopard version 10.6.8.) However, a recent customer project led me to install the Shrew Soft VPN Client they supported so that I could access their network through their Netscreen firewall. (This client is a free IPsec client distributed under open source license, to get it to work in the Mac I needed to also install the LGPL Qt Framework and a TUN/TAP driver, but that is another story…)
Some time later, I found out that after installing the Shrew Soft Client, neither the Cisco VPN Client nor the built-in Native Cisco VPN Support would work on my Mac. The AnyConnect VPN Client still worked fine. Obviously it was time for some troubleshooting.
Background
As a first step, I rebooted my Mac, but the Cisco VPN Client was still unhappy – it could not initialize the IKE ports. From the VPN Client Log file I saw messages such as:
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The console messages for the built-in Cisco VPN support were not as detailed, but also indicated an issue:
(On the Mac, you can find console messages using the console.app via Applications > Utilities > Console )
Ok, I removed the Shrew Soft VPN Client, the LGPL Qt Framework, and the TUN/TAP driver. I still got the same messages. Rebooted. I got the same messages. I removed and reloaded the Cisco VPN Client software. I got the same messages. Rebooted. I got the same messages.
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Partial Work-around
I did find a partial work-around – if I added “UseLegacyIKEPort=0” at the end of the .pcf files, I could get the Cisco VPN Client to connect. However, I still had issues with the built-in Native Cisco VPN Support.
Releasing Port 500
I decided that I really needed to release whatever was binding port 500 that IKE/ISAKMP was trying to use. Something was not completely cleaned out from my removal of the Shrew Soft VPN Client. I did try asking the IT Support desk for one of my customers (hey, I was having issues with the VPN to them), as well as the official Apple Support number about how to determine what program was binding a port, and how to release it. I got a couple hints from them, but also did a bunch of Google searches. Other folks had run into a similar binding issue, so I tried to put together the pieces.
By the way, Port 500 is mapped to ISAKMP by default on the Mac, you can see that based on the /etc/services file:
What worked for me to find the process using port 500 was a “list open files” command, and then kill the process with super user priviledges:
After I killed the iked process, I was able to run the Cisco VPN Client, and the built-in Native Cisco VPN Support.
Permanently Removing the Binding
If you recall, the problem persisted even when I rebooted the Mac previously. So the iked daemon was being called during the start up process. I needed to find and remove this daemon call as well. I started looking for likely processes in startup directories and found it pretty quickly:
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I rebooted my Mac, and success! My three regularly used VPN clients (the Cisco VPN Client, the Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client, and the built-in Native Cisco VPN Support) all worked. If required, I am pretty sure I could re-install the Shrew Soft VPN Client, and manually kill the iked daemon as needed if I wanted to run other VPN clients.
I hope this explanation may help others with Cisco VPN Client issues.
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— cwr