Windows 7, network connection with no default gateway: any way to change the "Unknown network" statu
- by e-t172
Hi,
I have a computer running Windows 7 Pro RTM. This computer has two network connections:
A Wi-fi connection to the Internet (through a home router) which works just fine.
An OpenVPN virtual network connection. More precisely, this is a virtual Ethernet connection which behaves exactly like a physical Ethernet wired connection.
My problem is that the "Network and sharing center" shows "Unknown network" for the OpenVPN connection. After some research I found that logical networks (outside a domain) are identified by the MAC address of the default gateway of the connection. Problem is, the OpenVPN connection has no default gateway: it is a private network, so I don't need one...
Consequently, the "Unknown network" is always considered public, so the firewall is always in "public mode", which I don't want. Plus, I can't rename "Unknown connection" or anything (which makes sense), so it is kinda ugly.
My goal is to define a proper logical network for the OpenVPN connection with the private profile. I know of some workarounds (disable the firewall, modify security policy to make all unknown networks "private") but they're still workarounds. I just want my clients to connect to the VPN without having to disable their firewall settings, without changing global configuration with potential side-effects (the "security policy" solution) and without having to look at an ugly "Unknown connection" in the Network and sharing center.
Is there any way I can do this? I tried to check what was going on in the registry (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList is interesting), but I still didn't find a way to "force" the OpenVPN connection to be assigned to a logical network.
Any help would be very appreciated.
A related question showed up at Superuser: http://superuser.com/questions/37355/windows-7-cant-identify-network/37422
