A customer is using the same address space as the company network. I need to connect with Cisco VPN Client to the network of the customer, without affecting local connectivity. To keep all working, I connect from a VM to avoid network addressing collisions. This works, but I'm looking for a way to get rid of the VM.

Is it possible to connect with Cisco VPN Client 4.8 from Windows 7, without changing the 'normal' routing? How to tell specific applications (most importantly: Putty, VNC, mstsc, psql) to resolve their routes to the VPN instead of the default network interface? Have been hearing about SOCKS-proxies, is that something that could be made to work?

I fear that this is a a bit of a crude question, but I'd be happy to specify more details/context.