Meraki Always On Vpn



  1. Always On Vpn With Meraki
  2. Meraki Vpn Device
  3. Meraki Always On Vpn Client
  4. Meraki Always On Vpn Reviews

Make sure that windows firewall allow RDP, would suggest to try and remote login prior to connecting via Meraki to confirm if issue exists within windows 10 RDP prerequisites. Ideally, if the vlan subnet is same then it shouldn't be a problem over client vpn. I have the same config done and works perfectly fine!

Auto VPN Best Practices

The best practices listed here focus on the most common deployment scenario, but is not intended to preclude the use of alternative topologies. The recommended SD-WAN architecture for most deployments is as follows:

  • MX at the datacenter deployed as a one-armed concentrator

  • Warm spare/High Availability at the datacenter

  • OSPF route advertisement for scalable upstream connectivity to connected VPN subnets

  • Datacenter redundancy

  • Split tunnel VPN from the branches and remote offices

  • Dual WAN uplinks at all branches and remote offices

The Meraki always on VPN faculty have apps for just about every device – Windows and Mac PCs, iPhones, golem disposition, hurt TVs, routers and more – and while they might vocalise complex, it's today element quickly as pressing a single button and getting connected. Cisco Meraki’s unique auto provisioning site-to-site VPN connects branches securely, without tedious manual VPN configuration. Leveraging the power of the cloud, MX Security Appliances configure, monitor, and maintain your VPN so you don't have to. Meraki VPN Client Setup. This short and sweet script will help with setting up the Windows VPN to use with Cisco Meraki firewall/routers. You can either run it raw or it can be included in your automation to deploy workstations at scale.

Auto VPN at the Branch

Before configuring and building Auto VPN tunnels, there are several configuration steps that should be reviewed.

WAN Interface Configuration

While automatic uplink configuration via DHCP is sufficient in many cases, some deployments may require manual uplink configuration of the MX security appliance at the branch. The procedure for assigning static IP addresses to WAN interfaces can be found in our MX IP assignment documentation.

Some MX models have only one dedicated Internet port and require a LAN port be configured to act as a secondary Internet port via the device local status page if two uplink connections are required. MX models that require reconfiguring a LAN port as a secondary Internet port currently include the MX64 line, MX67 line, and MX100 devices. This can also be verified per-model in our installation guides online. This configuration change can be performed on the device local status page on the Configure tab.

Subnet Configuration

Auto VPN allows for the addition and removal of subnets from the Auto VPN topology with a few clicks. The appropriate subnets should be configured before proceeding with the site-to-site VPN configuration.

Hub Priorities

Hub priority is based on the position of individual hubs in the list from top to bottom. The first hub has the highest priority, the second hub the second highest priority, and so on. Traffic destined for subnets advertised from multiple hubs will be sent to the highest priority hub that a) is advertising the subnet and b) currently has a working VPN connection with the spoke. Traffic to subnets advertised by only one hub is sent directly to that hub.

Extension

Configuring Allowed Networks

Always On Vpn With Meraki

To allow a particular subnet to communicate across the VPN, locate the local networks section in the Site-to-site VPN page. The list of subnets is populated from the configured local subnets and static routes in the Addressing & VLANs page, as well as the Client VPN subnet if one is configured.

To allow a subnet to use the VPN, set the Use VPN drop-down to yes for that subnet.

Auto VPN at the Data Center

Meraki Vpn Device

Deploying a One-Armed Concentrator

A one-armed concentrator is the recommended datacenter design choice for an SD-WAN deployment. The following diagram shows an example of a datacenter topology with a one-armed concentrator:

NAT Traversal

Whether to use Manual or Automatic NAT traversal is an important consideration for the VPN concentrator.

Use manual NAT traversal when:

  • There is an unfriendly NAT upstream

  • Stringent firewall rules are in place to control what traffic is allowed to ingress or egress the datacenter

  • It is important to know which port remote sites will use to communicate with the VPN concentrator

If manual NAT traversal is selected, it is highly recommended that the VPN concentrator be assigned a static IP address. Manual NAT traversal is intended for configurations when all traffic for a specified port can be forward to the VPN concentrator.

Use automatic NAT traversal when:

  • None of the conditions listed above that would require manual NAT traversal exist

If automatic NAT traversal is selected, the MX will automatically select a high numbered UDP port to source Auto VPN traffic from. The VPN concentrator will reach out to the remote sites using this port, creating a stateful flow mapping in the upstream firewall that will also allow traffic initiated from the remote side through to the VPN concentrator without the need for a separate inbound firewall rule.

With all the increased focus on working from home and remote access lately, I figured now would be a good time to share my notes on configuring Always On VPN. This first post will cover the basics of the Always On VPN technology. This guide will be split into multiple parts. Links to each individual post in this series can be found below.

Always On VPN – Certificates and Active Directory
Always On VPN – VPN and NPS Server Configuration
Always On VPN – User Tunnel
Always On VPN – Device Tunnel
Always On VPN – Troubleshooting

I want to preface this series by saying that I am not an expert on this topic. These are my notes based on my experiences working with Always On VPN. I highly recommend reading through the official Microsoft Documentation. Additionally, throughout this series I reference a number of posts by Richard Hicks. If you’re going to be deploying any sort of remote access solution, I recommend bookmarking his website.

How Does Always On VPN Work?

Always On VPN is a solution that allows a client to automatically establish a VPN connection without any user interaction. The technology that makes this possible is the VPNv2 CSP node, which is built into Windows 10. This CSP (configuration service provider) allows the built-in Windows 10 VPN client to be configured using an MDM solution (Intune), or PowerShell.

The server side of a typical Always On VPN deployment requires at least one VPN server and one authentication (RADIUS) server. Additionally, a certificate authority is required to issue certificates to the servers and clients. The certificates will be used to authenticate the VPN connection.

The Windows 10 VPN client can be configured to connect a user authenticated tunnel or a device authenticated tunnel. Both types of tunnels can be connected simultaneously if required.

User Tunnel

The User Tunnel is established when a user logs into a computer. This type of tunnel is ideal for granting access to file shares or applications.

Here is a high-level overview of the connection process for a Always On VPN user tunnel.

  1. The VPN client sends a connection request to the external IP address of the VPN server
  2. The edge firewall passes the connection request to the external interface of the VPN server
  3. The VPN server passes the connection request to the RADIUS server. The connection request leaves via the internal interface of the VPN server and passes through the internal firewall
  4. The RADIUS server receives and authenticates the connection request
  5. The RADIUS server returns an accept or deny response to the VPN server
  6. The VPN server allows or denies the connection request based on the response from the RADIUS server

Meraki Always On Vpn Client

Device Tunnel

The Device Tunnel is established as soon as a computer is powered on and connected to the internet. A user does not need to be logged into a computer for a device tunnel to connect. This type of tunnel is ideal for granting access to Active Directory or other management servers like Configuration Manager.

Here is a high-level overview of the connection process for a Always On VPN device tunnel.

  1. The VPN client sends a connection request to the external IP address of the VPN server
  2. The edge firewall passes the connection request to the external interface of the VPN server
  3. The VPN server validates the computer authentication certificate of the client and allows or denies the connection request

Notice that the device tunnel does not use RADIUS for authentication. The VPN server preforms the authentication. This prevents device tunnels from taking advantage of more advanced Always On VPN features like conditional access and multi-factor authentication. For more guidance on when to utilize device tunnels refer to this post.

VPN Protocols

Always On VPN utilizes familiar VPN infrastructure, which means that it can also utilize familiar VPN protocols. There are two main protocols that make the most sense to use when working with Always On VPN.

IKEv2

Internet Key Exchange version 2 (IKEv2) has good security and good performance. Its ability to automatically re-connect after a short interruption gives it good reliability as well. The primary concern with using IKEv2 is that communication happens on UDP 500 and UDP 4500. This makes it more likely that the connection will be blocked by firewalls.

Note that when using a Always On VPN device tunnel, IKEv2 is the only supported protocol.

SSTP

Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) also has good security, and good performance. The main benefit of using SSTP is that communication happens on TCP 443, so it is very unlikely that it will be blocked anywhere. The downsides to SSTP are that it is not quite as secure as IKEv2, and it does not handle connection interruptions as well.

About this Guide

The goal of this series is to cover the deployment of a basic Always On VPN environment. This guide will assume the reader has existing knowledge of Active Directory Domain Services, Active Directory Certificate Services, DNS, and basic enterprise networking concepts.

This example deployment of Always On VPN will include:

1 VPN server running Windows Server 2019 with the Routing and Remote Access role. This server will be located in a perimeter network and will have 2 network adapters.
1 NPS server running Windows Server 2019 with the Network Policy Server role. This server will be located on in the internal network.
1 VPN client running Windows 10 Enterprise 1909. Both user and device tunnels will be configured.

This deployment will be configured to use IKEv2 for the User Tunnel and Device tunnel.
This guide also assumes Active Directory Domain Services, Active Directory Certificate Services, and Group Policy are installed and functional.

Additional Reading

This guide is for a basic deployment of Always On VPN. There are more advanced features that can be configured but will not be covered here.

Meraki Always On Vpn Reviews

Also, remember to check out the full Microsoft Documentation.