Nat-nat

I had a customer move their office last week. Verizon said that "everything will be the same" - same IP, same type of T1, so in theory all they had to do was unplug their router(s), move them over, replug and all would be fine..

Just in case, the customer had asked me to be on-site and at first everything seemed fine.. I moved the routers (we have a VPN router behind Verizon's Netopia), replugged and expected a miracle, but nothing worked.. I called Verizon.

"Oh yeah", said the Verizon tech, "the number of channels has changed - you need to change that on the Netopia".

Okey dokey, 'cept I don't have the password to the Netopia because they installed that. We tried Verizon's "default" password, no go. Now what?

Well, the Netopia can be reset from a hole on the bottom. I hated doing that, but had no other choice. After the reset, the tech led me through the Netopia config without a problem.. except..

During the config the tech asked "Are you Natting?". I replied "Yes", because we have our VPN router set to hand out private dhcp addresses. He said "Fine, because we can't double nat".

Yeah.. so anyway, everything seemed to come up all right, we had internet access, but our VPN's wouldn't come up. Maybe a routing problem?

I decided to give it till the next morning, but it still wasn't up then. Called Verizon again. We went over the Netopia setup. When we got to the last screen, I noticed that "IP Address Serving" was turned on. "Doesn't that mean it's natting?", I asked. The tech mumbled something and said he'd have to call me back..

I didn't want to mess with their router, so I waited patiently and soon enough that tech and another called back. We went through the config again, and when we got to the last screen the new tech said "It's natting - are you natting?".

I sighed. "Yes, I am". We turned that off and moments later the VPN's came up.

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