Internet services usually collect all our personal details while we browse; this is where we need a VPN. Every time we use a free public WiFi hotspot connection, all our data is in danger of getting snipped. If you are an avid internet user and concerned about your privacy online, employing a free VPN software is a better option as compared to a Proxy software. Virtual Private Network securely connects your PC to various location worldwide and helps you with remote desktop access, files and folder sharing, and so on.
VPN software gives you protected internet access by adding security to your public as well as private networks, may it be your internet connection or a Wi-Fi Hotspot connection. In other words, it hides and protects your identity online. While a VPN can’t make online connections completely unidentified or anonymous, but can certainly increase security and privacy.
The problem was that every time when I tried to connect via Cisco AnyConnect Client it kept looping through the connection and never made it connect. The fix is quite simple actually, go to Network Connections from Control Panel, right-click Cisco AnyConnect Security Mobility Client Connection, and choose Properties. Jul 03, 2019 Fix Common Windows 10 VPN Issues 1. Ensure that your regular network connection is working. Check configuration settings and login credentials. Verify that your router is VPN compatible and that any VPN related settings are configured. Change Servers.
It is now time to use a VPN software also for Security & Privacy. Here is a list of best free VPN software & service providers for Windows 10/8/7 computers. Browse anonymously and protect your Internet connection at all times. Do note that most of them also offer a paid version that gives you faster speed and unlocks additional features.
Free VPN software for Windows
Read: What is a VPN, and Why should we use a VPN?
1. TunnelBear VPN
TunnelBear a simple VPN software with no complex installation process or crapware. Like most of the other VPN agents mentioned above, TunnelBear also creates a virtual network adapter used to route your internet traffic to its servers in Germany, UK, France, the United States and a couple of other countries. The program comes in both a free and paid version. TunnelBear blocks all tracking websites and lets you browse freely without the fear of getting tracked or hacked. This one is worth checking out!
2. Avira Phantom VPN
This free VPN service provides a secure, encrypted, and anonymous access to the internet on your Windows PC as well as your Android devices. It encrypts the entire communication between your Windows PC and the network and ensures your online privacy. It is one of the most trusted VPN when it is about the financial transactions done on a shared network. It ensures that none of your online activities are tracked by the 3rd parties. Like most of the VPN software, Avira Phantom VPN also lets you change your IP address and access the websites restricted in your area. Avira Phantom VPN is a lightweight file and gets installed on your PC easily.
3. Globus Free VPN Browser
Globus Free VPN masks your IP address and allows you to access to any restricted website. It comes as a package which includes a VPS agent and a browser. When you download and install the VPN agent, the browser automatically installs and gets pinned to your taskbar. It anonymously encrypts the entire traffic. The VPN agent gives you IP of UK by default along with a list of IP addresses you can select from. This free VPN agent is easy to use and provides full tracking and protection against data acquisition.
4. Betternet VPN
Easy to use this simple VPN software comes with a one-button activation and is surely one of the best free VPN agents available. Betternet comes in both free as well as a paid version where the premium version includes some extra safety features. Designed for both PCs and Smartphones, Betternet requires no subscription. It hides your IP address randomly and let you access the websites restricted in your region. Good speed and ability to avoid cookies are some other features of Betternet VPN.
5. SecurityKiss VPN
This is a simple VPN software with a weird name, of course. However, it claims to protect all your data from the eavesdroppers. With a very simple installation process, this program brings no crapware or toolbar or hidden add-ons along. While its default server is based in the US, The virtual network created by the free version of SecurityKiss allows you to get an IP of UK, Canada, Germany, or France.
6. Spotflux
Spotflux is a free VPN software which creates an encrypted connection and helps you with safe and uninterrupted web browsing transferring your data. The program not just protects your data from the hackers but also prevents the internet agencies from tracking your online activities by providing the random DNS address and IP addresses. Furthermore, Spotflux also scans and removes malware from your incoming connections.
7. Neorouter VPN
This is a free zero-configuration VPN solution for your PC. It supports various platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, and more. Neorouter comes with a P2P support (the peer-to-peer connection between computers), portable client setup, and remote wakeup (wake up your PC when connected to a network). The secured network protects your internet traffic on shared connections and helps you sharing files and folder with your friends and play network games.
8. Hotspot Shield VPN
With Hotspot Shield installed on your PC, you can browse safely even at public WiFi hotspots. It provides complete anonymity as well as proxy, adding more to your security online. While this software makes some changes to your homepage and also installs some toolbars forcefully, it is effective when it is about your online privacy and anonymity. The virtual tunnel of Hotspot Shield lets you hide your IP and select any one from the drop-down list which includes UK, Japan, Australia, and the US. The connection with this VPN might drop during heavy traffic hours.
TIP: Download this VPN to give your Windows the Ultimate Privacy Shield.
9. Hola Unblocker Free VPN
This is a simple tool which lets you bypass the restrictions and browse any website blocked in your region. Unlike the other VPN agents in the list above, Hola Unblocker features a tool named Internet Accelerator, which accelerates your internet speed and also reduces the bandwidth usage. It is an easy and faster alternative to proxy to hide your IP address and browse safely.
10. CyberGhost Secure VPN
Vpn Connection Problems Windows 10
Available in free as well as premium versions, CyberGhost is one of the best free VPN solutions for your Windows PC. It is an easy-to-use personal VPN service which hides all your common internet activities and your identity from the hackers. CyberGhost Secure VPN also lets you spoof your IP address and stay safe. Other salient features of CyberGhost Secure VPN Free include access to free servers, 1GB traffic/month, limited availability, bandwidth limited to 2 Mbps and a forced disconnection after 6 hours. Their CyberGhost Premium VPN is available at $63 for 18 months for 7 devices resulting in a huge SAVING of 73%! UPDATE: Cyberghost has discontinued the Free version.
Other similar free VPN software you may want to take a look at:
Freelan Open Source VPN software | VPN One Click | Ultrasurf | TOR | Betternet | Jumpto Browser | Hide.Me | strongSwan | Traceless.Me VPN | Psiphon | Windscribe VPN | ProtonVPN | NordVPN | VPNBook | Panda VPN Free.
Let us know if you use any VPN software and if so, which one.
TIP: Download this tool to quickly find & fix Windows errors automatically
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Editor's note: In the video, Brandon Vigliarolo uses Microsoft Windows Server 2016, and some of the steps and menus are different from the following tutorial by Brien Posey. This tip was first published in May 2003.
VPNs have gone from obscurity to being a common method of linking private networks together across the Internet. Although VPNs initially became popular because they free companies from the expense of connecting networks with dedicated leased lines, part of the reason that VPNs have become so accepted is that they tend to be very reliable. Even so, VPN connections do occasionally experience problems. Here are several techniques you can use to troubleshoot VPN connections.
SEE: The Best VPN services for 2019 (CNET)
What's the problem?
There are four types of problems that tend to occur with VPN connections. These include:
The VPN connection being rejected.
The acceptance of an unauthorized connection.
The inability to reach locations that lie beyond the VPN server.
The inability to establish a tunnel.
1: The VPN connection is rejected.
Having a VPN client's connection rejected is perhaps the most common VPN problem. Part of the reason this problem is so common is that there are a lot of issues that can cause a connection to be rejected. If your VPN server is rejecting client connections, the first thing you need to do is to check to make sure the Routing And Remote Access service is running. You can check this by opening the server's Control Panel and clicking on the Administrative Tools icon, followed by the Services icon.
Once you've verified that the necessary services are running, try pinging the VPN server by IP address from the VPN client. You should ping by IP address initially so that you can verify that basic TCP/IP connectivity exists. If the ping is successful, then ping the server again, but this time ping by the server's fully qualified domain name (FQDN) rather than by its address. If this ping fails where the IP address ping succeeded, you have a DNS problem, because the client is unable to resolve the server's name to an IP address.
Check on the authentication process
Once you've established that there is a valid TCP/IP connection between the VPN client and server, and that name resolution is working correctly, the next thing to check is the authentication process. As you may know, there are a lot of different authentication methods available to a VPN connection. Both the VPN client and the VPN server must have at least one authentication method in common.
More about Networking
You can check to see which authentication methods the VPN server is configured to use by entering the MMC command at the Run prompt. When you do, Windows will open an empty Microsoft Management Console session. Now, select the Add / Remove Snap In command from the Console menu. When you see the Add / Remove Snap In properties sheet, click the Add button on the Standalone tab. This will reveal a list of the available snap-ins. Select Routing And Remote Access from the list and click the Add button, followed by the Close and OK buttons.
Now, the Routing And Remote Access snap-in should be added to the console. Right-click on the listing for your VPN server and select the Properties command from the resulting shortcut menu. This will display the server's properties sheet. Select the Security tab and click the Authentication Methods button. This will cause Windows to display a dialog box with all of the available authentication methods. You can enable or disable authentication methods by selecting or deselecting the appropriate check boxes.
Issues With Vpn Windows 10
The method for checking the authentication method on the client end varies depending on the client's operating system. For a Windows XP system, right-click on the VPN connection and select the Properties command from the resulting shortcut menu. This will reveal the connection's properties sheet. Now, select the properties sheet's Security tab, select the Advanced radio button, and click the Settings button to reveal the available authentication methods.
I usually prefer to use Windows Authentication in VPN environments, but RADIUS is also a popular choice. If you are using RADIUS Authentication, you must verify that the client supports RADIUS and that the VPN server has no trouble communicating with the RADIUS server.
SEE: Understanding VPNs and how to choose one (CNET)
More things to check
If the authentication methods appear to be set correctly, the next step is to check the technique by which the client is trying to connect to the VPN server. If the client is dialing in to the server, rather than connecting through the Internet, it could be that the remote user has no dial-in privileges. You can check the privileges either by looking at the Dial In tab on the user's properties sheet in Active Directory Users And Computers, or by looking at the domain's remote access policy. This would also be a good time to verify that the user actually knows how to establish the VPN connection and that the user is using the correct username and password.
This may sound obvious, but if your domain is running in Windows 2000 Native Mode, your VPN server needs to be a member of the domain. If the VPN server hasn't joined the domain, it will be unable to authenticate logins.
You also need to take a look at IP addresses. Each Web-based VPN connection actually uses two different IP addresses for the VPN client computer. The first IP address is the one that was assigned by the client's ISP. This is the IP address that's used to establish the initial TCP/IP connection to the VPN server over the Internet. However, once the client attaches to the VPN server, the VPN server assigns the client a secondary IP address. This IP address has the same subnet as the local network and thus allows the client to communicate with the local network.
At the time you set up the VPN server, you must either specify that the server will use a DHCP server to assign addresses to clients, or you can create a bank of IP addresses to assign to clients directly from the VPN server. In either case, if the server runs out of valid IP addresses, it will be unable to assign an address to the client and the connection will be refused.
For environments in which a DHCP server is used, one of the more common setup errors is specifying an incorrect NIC. If you right-click on the VPN server in the Routing And Remote Access console and select the Properties command from the resulting shortcut menu, you'll see the server's properties sheet. The properties sheet's IP tab contains radio buttons that allow you to select whether a static address pool or a DHCP server will be used. If you select the DHCP server option, you must select the appropriate network adapter from the drop-down list at the bottom of the tab. You must select a network adapter that has a TCP/IP path to the DHCP server.
2: The acceptance of unauthorized connections.
Now that I've discussed reasons why a connection might be refused, let's take a look at the opposite problem in which unauthorized connections are accepted. This problem is much less common than not getting connected at all, but is much more serious because of the potential security issues.
If you look at a user's properties sheet in the Active Directory Users And Computers console, you'll notice that the Dial In tab contains an option to control access through the remote access policy. If this option is selected and the effective remote access policy is set to allow remote access, the user will be able to attach to the VPN. Although I have been unable to re-create the situation personally, I have heard rumors that a bug exists in Windows 2000 that causes the connection to be accepted even if the effective remote access policy is set to deny a user's connection, and that it's best to allow or deny connections directly through the Active Directory Users And Computers console.
SEE: The best mobile VPNs can ensure your privacy anywhere (ZDNet)
3: The inability to reach locations beyond the VPN server.
Another common VPN problem is that a connection is successfully established, but that the remote user is unable to access the network lying beyond the VPN server. By far, the most common cause of this problem is that permission hasn't been granted for the user to access the entire network. If you have ever worked with Windows NT 4.0, you may recall a setting in RAS that allowed you to control whether a user had access to one computer or to the entire network. This particular setting doesn't exist in Windows 2000, but there is another setting that does the same thing.
To allow a user to access the entire network, go to the Routing And Remote Access console and right-click on the VPN server that's having the problem. Select the Properties command from the resulting shortcut menu to display the server's properties sheet, and then select the properties sheet's IP tab. At the top of the IP tab is an Enable IP Routing check box. If this check box is enabled, VPN and RAS users will be able to get to the rest of the network. If the check box is not selected, these users will be able to access only the VPN server, but nothing beyond.
The problem could also be related to other routing issues. For example, if a user is dialing directly in to the VPN server, it's usually best to configure a static route between the client and the server. You can configure a static route by going to the Dial In tab of the user's properties sheet in Active Directory Users And Computers, and selecting the Apply A Static Route check box. This will cause Windows to display the Static Routes dialog box. Click the Add Route button and then enter the destination IP address and network mask in the space provided. The metric should be left at 1.
SEE: Cybersecurity in an IoT and mobile world (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
If you're using a DHCP server to assign IP addresses to clients, there are a couple of other problems that could cause users not to be able to go beyond the VPN server. One such problem is that of duplicate IP addresses. If the DHCP server assigns the user an IP address that is already in use elsewhere on the network, Windows will detect the conflict and prevent the user from accessing the rest of the network.
Another common problem is the user not receiving an address at all. Most of the time, if the DHCP server can't assign the user an IP address, the connection won't make it this far. However, there are situations in which an address assignment fails, so Windows automatically assigns the user an address from the 169.254.x.x range. If the client is assigned an address in this range, but this address range isn't present in the system's routing tables, the user will be unable to navigate the network beyond the VPN server.
4: Difficulty establishing a tunnel.
Vpn Doesn't Work Windows 10
If everything seems to be working well, but you can't seem to establish a tunnel between the client and the server, there are two main possibilities of what could be causing the problem. The first possibility is that one or more of the routers involved is performing IP packet filtering. IP packet filtering could prevent IP tunnel traffic. I recommend checking the client, the server, and any machines in between for IP packet filters. You can do this by clicking the Advanced button on each machine's TCP/IP Properties sheet, selecting the Options tab from the Advanced TCP/IP Settings Properties sheet, selecting TCP/IP Filtering, and clicking the Properties button.
The other possibility is that a proxy server is standing between the client and the VPN server. A proxy server performs NAT translation on all traffic flowing between the client and the Internet. This means that packets appear to be coming from the proxy server rather than from the client itself. In some cases, this interaction could prevent a tunnel from being established, especially if the VPN server is expecting the client to have a specific IP address. You must also keep in mind that a lot of older or low-end proxy servers (or NAT firewalls) don't support the L2TP, IPSec, or PPTP protocols that are often used for VPN connections.
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Also see
How to select a trustworthy VPN (TechRepublic)
How to balance security and user needs when choosing a VPN service provider (TechRepublic)
The best VPN services: Our 10 favorite vendors for protecting your privacy (ZDNet)
Inside a VPN service: How NordVPN conducts the business of Internet privacy (ZDNet)