{"id":465,"date":"2021-08-03T00:37:02","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T19:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.al-zakirah202.familyds.com\/?p=465"},"modified":"2021-08-03T00:37:02","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T19:07:02","slug":"fix-vpn-connected-but-server-not-reachable-on-mac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.al-zakirah202.familyds.com\/wordpress\/2021\/08\/03\/fix-vpn-connected-but-server-not-reachable-on-mac\/","title":{"rendered":"Fix: VPN connected but server not reachable on Mac"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lately, I was experiencing an issue on my new M1 MacBook Pro where I had the VPN connected and connection was indeed successfully established. \u00a0However, I wasn’t able to access the shared resources on the network – unable to access a network drive as an example. \u00a0If you are experiencing the same issue then please keep reading.The Mac comes with L2TP VPN client by default which can be configured on the “Network” pane (System Preferences -> Network). \u00a0Although, OpenVPN is the best in-terms of perfomance but L2TP is also equally good when it comes to security. \u00a0The good part about L2TP is that the client comes pre-installed\/supported on a Mac.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Network Pan on a Mac<\/p><\/div>\n

Once you have it configured then you can click on the VPN connection name (you gave) on the left list to select it. \u00a0Please make sure to check “Show VPN status in menu bar” option as this will display a little icon in the menu bar which could be handy to easily invoke it. \u00a0Please note that if you have it configured properly then the “Server Address” and the “Account Name” fields would not be empty. \u00a0I deliberately deleted those entries from the pic for confidentiality reasons.<\/p>\n

\"\"

L2TP VPN connection<\/p><\/div>\n

Now, you should be seeing a rectangular shaped icon in the menu bar. \u00a0And clicking on it would display the VPN network name which you have just finished configuring. \u00a0Select the “Connect VPN Name” entry to invoke the connection. \u00a0This would present another window where you are asked to input the username and password field to establish the connection.<\/p>\n

\"\"

VPN icon on the Menu Bar<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

L2TP VPN Credentials Window<\/p><\/div>\n

After having entered the valid credentials and clicking on the “OK” button would result in establishing the connection. \u00a0The status on the menu bar would now show a timer displaying the time elapsed after establishing the connection. \u00a0You can also see that clicking that icon now shows an option “Disconnect VPN Name” which can be used to disconnect the VPN. \u00a0If for any reason you are not able to come this far or not able to establish the connection then repeat the whole process and see if the credentials provided were invalid or VPN client wasn’t configured properly.<\/p>\n

\"\"

VPN Connected Status in the Menu bar<\/p><\/div>\n

At this point, we have successfully established the VPN connection. \u00a0If you have access to the VPN server to which the client is connected to, \u00a0you could check on the server to check the connection\/client list. \u00a0And indeed it should list the IP address of your MAC as one of the active connections. \u00a0At this stage, if you have configured your shared resources (like the network share or a drive ..etc) on the server side to be accessible via SMB for example then you should now be able to access that drive post establishing a successful VPN connection from outside your local home network.<\/p>\n

If you unable to, then there could many reasons for this access issue. \u00a0Assuming that you have the VPN configured properly and the network drive or the shared resource is setup properly with proper access privileges, the most likely cause of the issue is that the service order is NOT being set properly on the “Network Pane”. \u00a0In order to verify that bring back the Network pane again (as shown below). \u00a0By comparing the status now with the picture before VPN connection was established, you can see that the VPN network is now at the top of the list on the left in the window. \u00a0This is very critical for it to successfully establish the right service order which’s needed to enable the access to the network shared resources. \u00a0You could see that in my case it already tops the list and I don’t have issues with accessing the network shared resources right now.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Network Pane with VPN connected<\/p><\/div>\n

If you are not seeing it topping your list then you need to do the following to fix the order issue:<\/p>\n