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Nortel Contivity - Cisco 2621

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I am trying to establish an IPSEC VPN between a Cisco 2621 and a Nortel Contivity 1010. I am getting most of the way there and then get a debug message on the Cisco saying that it received a unencrypted packet when it should have been encrypted thenthe tunnel falls over. Is the Contivity looking for some additional authentication before it establishes the tunnel?

If anyone has done this before I would be grateful for help.

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by punderwood

DO you know if this is failing at layer 1 or layer 2 ike? This should work, but you may want to email me the debug of the cisco, so that I can have a better look. I am meeting with Nortel tomorrow so if your quick I can ask them when I'm there.

by scottsman

are you using the proper ports? 500 udp, 50 ip and 51 ip ? if not especially 51 could cause this error

by safiera

It would help to know what the message from the Contivity is. Most likely it is an error response to the Cisco, saying it can't negotiate the SA.

First, turn off the "keep alive" on the Cisco, if they still have it. It's been a while for me butCisco used to send a keep alive parameter or message that is not an IPSec standard. Only Cisco understands it. For Tunnels with Contivity, Check Point and probably others this needs to be turned off.

Second, different VPN brands handle the bad negotiation responses differently resulting in somewhat meaningless debug and log messages. Try to check the Contivity logs / debug to see why it is not happy.

Third, double check your encryption and hash algorithms. Just because you enable DES, 3DES and AES on one side and 3DES on the other, both with MD5, does not mean the systems will talk long enough to find common ground. Try setting both sides to only one option so it is the first and only SA they try.

Fouth, triple check your SA and session timers. Problems with session timers typically show up only after the tunnel has been up for a while. It suddenly drops for a while and may get re-established later. Bad SA times may result in failed negotiations and are the single most frequent issue I ran into during Interop testing of several vpn brands.

Good luck.

by wroming

There is a known bug to talk between a Cisco and Nortel device. Contact Cisco for the bug update it is free and they can send it to you.

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