Unidentified Network; No Internet Access?

Laila

Hello,

I've been using PIA for just a few days, and I've been getting disconnected from the internet a lot. When I diagnose this issue, I always see "DHCP not enabled." I let the computer fix that, but the error always comes back.

I think that my network settings are a little messed up.

The "Unidentified network" only showed up after using PIA. I tried disabling that and the "Local area connection 2," but then I would get no internet connection at all, despite it saying that I was connected to my home network.

What should I do?

OmniNegro

You have the VPN Kill Switch enabled. That is how it works. It simply stops DHCP from allowing your OS to use any connection when the one it should be using is lost for a second.

The problem is that most OSes are painfully stupid about DHCP and will automatically use anything without ever prompting you for permission, nor even informing you that the connection you had was lost.

So the only way to be certain to stop this is to kill off DHCP altogether. What firewall do you use? Some of them can be told what IP ranges to allow outgoing packets to, and by making a rule for the VPN's 10.* IP range you can effectively have the benefits of the Kill Switch without having to lose DHCP and fix it repeatedly.

Others can tell you about how to do this. I will look for the articles where it was posted if someone does not post it here soon. (Time for me to sleep though. If it is not done by whenever I get up, I will start looking for the details.)

Laila

Thanks for your reply!

I had the VPN kill switch enabled until recently, and the problem still persists... Even when I am disconnected from PIA, it's hard to maintain an internet connection, sometimes no connection at all. It wasn't like this before using PIA.

And I'm just using Windows firewall managed by Kaspersky

OmniNegro

Thanks for your reply!

I had the VPN kill switch enabled until recently, and the problem still persists... Even when I am disconnected from PIA, it's hard to maintain an internet connection, sometimes no connection at all. It wasn't like this before using PIA.

And I'm just using Windows firewall managed by Kaspersky

I am looking for the threads where this was discussed. It is simply adding a rule to the firewall in question to allow only traffic to a specific IP range and forbid any other than that. Even without changing firewalls, someone may know of a tool you can use to add this feature if it does not exist already in your firewall.

If it can be done for you, this would prevent the problem you are having, and still protect you from the chance of traffic slipping out over your unencrypted Internet connection. But do note that it will not mean you do not lose the connection if you lose contact to the VPN even for the briefest of moments. That is very intentional. It prevents a person from getting between you and the VPN and pretending to be the VPN or even relaying traffic through as if they were the VPN. (This sort of attack is generally called a "Man in the Middle" attack, and can defeat most security.)

*Edit* I tried searching for threads with "kill switch firewall IP" minus the quotes and read most everything back through late August. Anyone know what keywords I should be using to find the threads that discuss this?

Laila

I would like to try what you suggested if more details can be provided. However, I would be happy just to restore my internet connection to proper working order like before using PIA, even without the VPN kill switch. I still don't understand why I'm seeing "Unidentified network" and "no internet connection" associated with it, and why that is disrupting/blocking the connection to my router when the kill switch is disabled. Sorry, I'm just totally new to all this...

I attempted to uninstall PIA to start over fresh, but it wouldn't completely uninstall, and I lost my internet connection until I added the PIA files back. All I want is some protection while torrenting occasionally, and enabling all of these features may have been overkill. Some suggested that using a proxy in utorrent would provide sufficient protection and that I don't need the VPN enabled at the same time.

Thanks again for your time and quick responses. I really appreciate it.

OmniNegro

No need to thank me. Everyone here is new at first, and you have to learn somewhere.

The "Unidentified Network" is the TAP driver used by the VPN to tunnel encrypted information out to their servers. And this problem happens often, and for many reasons. There is no real good explanation that covers all cases where it happens though.

But you are right that the proxy alone would be more than enough if all you want disconnected from you is torrent activity. Just make sure your torrent client actually obeys the proxy rules. Some do not. I use qBittorrent and can tell you that it does, but half the time I cannot get it to work for some reason. (I have a rather atypical network, and I am convinced my ISP is owned and operated by nazis, so I tend not to worry about it.)

Hopefully one of the other regulars will have an idea what I need to search for to find the threads discussing how to implement a firewall rule to work like the VPN kill switch so it can fix at least that much of the problem.

Laila

"Just make sure your torrent client actually obeys the proxy rules. Some do not. I use qBittorrent and can tell you that it does, but half the time I cannot get it to work for some reason."

I found an article titled "Is your VPN/Proxy working?" which lead to ipMagnet. Once I tried it out, it showed that my utorrent ip address is from the Netherlands. I assume that it's working properly, but if I'm missing anything, please let me know!

Regarding the issue we were talking about earlier, I noticed that the "unidentified network" suddenly disappeared this time when PIA was disconnected, and my torrent speeds are back to normal (they were terribly slow with VPN enabled). I wonder if something changed when I re-installed the PIA files. The black dialog box mentioned something about replacing the TAP driver. I'm afraid to enable VPN again now that  my network settings appear normal... Until there is more information on the firewall suggestion, I'll just use the proxy for now and hope this means I won't get any more errors and random disconnections.

OmniNegro

I believe the proxy will serve you best for simple protection of your IP. The proxy supports no encryption in and of itself though. So be certain to "Force" encryption in the torrent client and do not allow "incoming legacy connections". That term basically means zero encryption. And since the proxy can obfuscate what IP you are by mixing you with dozens of other people, if your traffic is unencrypted, anyone can read it easily and find your actual IP by a number of dirty tricks.

And yes, I should have mentioned that earlier. Sorry. I guess I forgot to mention it.

yusuke66

I have the same problem as Laila and scoured the internet for a solution.  And the solution is this:

Run the PIA program as the administrator.

That seemed to have solved the problem for me even though Windows still state "unidentified network". 

Dengue

I have this exact issue as well, my internet connections page looks exactly as pictured above in Laila's post only I connect via Local Area Connection 1, not wireless as with her picture. I'm wondering what is happening and can I fix this. I also use Kaspersky firewall.

Also when my daughters laptop is connected using the VPN a warning pops up saying wireless connection is public and not secure!! 

How can I make it secure and private as with my home network connection?

snikk9

Was having the same problem just now, reinstalled the tap drivers and restarted my computer. It still says unidentifed, but now says "internet" on both

AllAboutThatBass

Hello,

Those "no internet" and "unidentified network" messages in your network connections details you are seeing is normal Windows behavior. The TAP adapter used with our VPN is not a true network adapter by Windows reckoning, and is interpreted as a lack of connection. Please disregard those messages.

However, if you are having genuine connection issues, by all means, please contact support at [email protected] and we can help troubleshoot. 

Zarmels1

I've been having the same issues. I've been using both a Proxy and VPN to encrypt my traffic within uTorrent but I suspect the issue is with the PIA VPN Client. Everything starts out fine but as soon as I disconnect from PIA VPN Client, I get the "Unidentified Network" issue regardless if I'm on wired or wireless. The only way I've been able to restore my internet connection is by uninstalling the NIC within Windows Device Manager and restarting. At first I thought this was because I had the kill switch on so I disabled that feature but I'm still encountering the issue.

I'm running Windows 7 32bit.  

ancap

I'm pretty sure it's because of pia's client (pia_manager.exe), since I've narrowed it down to this application writing and deleting the network routes and it sometimes messes it up. I simply re-add the correct route and it works.

If you have any problems with "unidentified network" and "no internet access", I suggest you output your network route in your message, using command prompt (cmd.exe) and type the following: route print
It's possible that you also have the same problem I have.

So what might get wrong? From my analyses (using the killswitch feature):
- Default physical gateway is removed from the route, hence, no internet connection available, thus the pia client (and inherently openvpn.exe) cannot connect. How can you see this?
0.0.0.0 (network destination) is missing, thus not routed to your (physical) nic's gateway (the ethernet adapter you receive and send data over the internet).
0.0.0.0 simply means any address (i.e. internet addresses).
To resolve this, make sure your pia client is not running and type (with admin rights in cmd): route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1
192.168.1.1 the gateway you have set
- Multiple private pia ip addresses that are not in the same class subnet, trying to use the same gateway on your vpn tap adapter, which also results in the same symptons, ala "unidentified network" and "no internet access".
To remedy this, simply remove all pia routes, using: route delete [pia Network Destination]
- Sometimes the client is really messed up and the tap adapter seems connected when the client is not even running (which includes openvpn.exe), as seen in Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections. Then you need to reinstall pia... and make sure you have an internet connection that is working (check step 1, if 0.0.0.0 is bound to the gateway of your physical nic).

In summary, from my observations and solving forementioned problems:
- The client does not readd the default gateway of the physical nic on startup, as proven in pia_manager.log, even when it's correctly set in C:\Program Files\pia_manager\data\settings.json
Thus, if you have no internet connection, you won't be able to connect to pia's vpn server(s) in the first place.
- Sometimes, out of a sudden, there is no internet connection and from observation of network routing, the client has not updated those settings to reflect the changes. The client needs to be restarted to solve this problem. This may also be the reason why there is out of class range ip's connected to the same gateway in network routing, hence you cannot get an internet connection, even when the tray icon is light green.

To conclude, I've got a suspicion it got to do with pia_manager.exe not (re)setting the routes correctly. The killswitch simply just removes 0.0.0.0 from your routing to your physical nic's default gateway, that's all.

You can either use openvpn.exe with pia config, which works stable or you perform manually, from time to time, the neccessary route add/delete to get it working.
I prefer to get the killswitch on, although I can create a script that does exacrlt this for me + isolate the os using comodo's free firewall.

You might wonder what the route table means, so I'll give a quick example and explanation:
Network Destination        Netmask          Gateway       Interface  Metric
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0        10.0.10.5        10.0.10.6     21
        10.0.10.1  255.255.255.255        10.0.10.5        10.0.10.6     20
        10.0.10.4  255.255.255.252         On-link         10.0.10.6    276
        10.0.10.6  255.255.255.255         On-link         10.0.10.6    276
        10.0.10.7  255.255.255.255         On-link         10.0.10.6    276
    46.165.210.17  255.255.255.255      192.168.1.1     192.168.1.24      6

Metric = The lower the number, the first it gets prioritized, although on a lower to hardware level (still managed by the os), the order in which the network adapters are set go first in case of data traffic, as specified in Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections -> Advanced -> Advanced Settings -> Adapters and Binding.
So, in this example, your default gateway 192.168.1.1 gets binded with pia's to connectable location server 46.165.210.17. Since PIA adapter goes first and your NIC goes second (see adapters and bindings), traffic will flow through the TAP adapter (with assigned ip 10.0.10.6). The gateway from pia's internal ip is 10.0.10.5, which lets all data go in and out, which is signified by 0.0.0.0.

I hope this helps someone out, as it took me some time to test, observe, analyze and fix it myself.
Most people probably give up after having no internet connection, whether with the use of pia or not, after it messes it up and I understand it is frustrating.
Just check if 0.0.0.0 is binded with your gateway, using: route print

For the devs:
It would be nice if you can reproduce my steps, as in to fix the routes being properly added and deleted, as it won't fix itself at startup, hence it's a matter of time before issues arrive, during or after being connected.