Network Connect and wireless 3G USB adapter issues with MacOS.
When connecting with Network Connect via a Huawei 3G USB adapter and a PPP interface on MacOS, the client is unable to complete the connection setup. An IP address is never received from the SA and setup fails with the following messages:
20091207125853.379549 Network Connect[p6795.t519] ncsvccontrol.error The service failed to connect (ncsvccontrol.mm:224)
20091207125853.381110 Network Connect[p6795.t519] nc.mac.app.1202.error <DSError 0xcd044c0 domain=nc.mac.app code=1202 "ncproxyd failed to establish a tunnel" userInfo={
DSErrorClassName = NCController;
DSErrorLocalizedAlertText = "Network Connect cannot start the tunneling service. See the Log Viewer for more information.";
DSErrorLocalizedAlertTitle = "Network Connect cannot establish a secure session.";
The issue is due to a compatibility issue with the card and MacOS. The card does not support ARP; So the Network Connect client is unable to add the routes, which are required for NC to work properly. As a result, the tunnel setup fails.
Currently, the code uses a routing socket to add routes and needs to perform ARP lookups to add routes, which have interfaces (instead of a host) as the gateway. The engineering team has exhaustively looked for a way to add these routes with a routing socket, which would avoid an ARP lookup; but it seems that the OS does not support this.