Am using an ADSL broadband connection through a SMC router/wifi modem. The standard set-up is that my Windows PC is linked direct by ethernet cable direct to the router and my Macmini is linked by Wifi. All works smoothly and rarely have any issues with internet connection dropping out.

But I have an issue when I use Wifi to connect my office laptop to the Internet. At first all is well but within what feels like 5-10min, the internet connection (for all 3 computers) suddenly drops out. Only way to ix is to re-set the modem. My hunch is that this might somehow be related to the VPN that I need to use for connection to my office network. Is this possible? Or any other things I should investigate?

I would be interested in knowing the solution to the VPN issue as well. I do not use WiFi to connect to my office network, but instead a direct link to my Linksys Router which is then connected to the cable modem. Every time I initiate the VPN connection, my system loses its ability to do any communication over port 80 (which is used by HTML servers/clients). I'm not sure what port Vonage uses for the VoIP, but surprisingly that continues working even though the VoIP Router is also connected to my Linksys Router.

gumball that's a pretty different issue from the OP. yours is on the computer level, the OPs is on the router level and affecting all machines on the network.

Alchemist: VPN very rarely screws up my router, but the only effect is that VPN doesn't work anymore. I then reset the router and all is well. In your case, try upgrading the firmware on the router, and make sure VPN is enabled/not firewalled etc. Or try a different router...

Gumball: Which VPN client do you use? You can set network preferences in Network Connections->Advanced Menu ->Advanced Settings... then rearrange the connections - the topmost is tried first. You could try rearranging these. More likely it's a problem with your VPN client software configuration. Mine activates only for internal network addresses, for example - everything else goes through the normal WiFi.

gumball that's a pretty different issue from the OP. yours is on the computer level, the OPs is on the router level and affecting all machines on the network.

Alchemist: VPN very rarely screws up my router, but the only effect is that VPN doesn't work anymore. I then reset the router and all is well. In your case, try upgrading the firmware on the router, and make sure VPN is enabled/not firewalled etc. Or try a different router...

Gumball: Which VPN client do you use? You can set network preferences in Network Connections->Advanced Menu ->Advanced Settings... then rearrange the connections - the topmost is tried first. You could try rearranging these. More likely it's a problem with your VPN client software configuration. Mine activates only for internal network addresses, for example - everything else goes through the normal WiFi.

Nikster, I am using pptpconfig (under Linux). You're probably right about my need to configure the settings differently. Pptpconfig allows me to specify which type of tunneling I will use; my choices are: 'Interface Only', 'Client to LAN', 'LAN to LAN', and 'All to Tunnel'. I can also add 'Network Routes', but what IP and bitmask to enter for these I am not sure.

Anyhow, when I use VPN I normally (and have to) specify 'All to Tunnel' and I do not have any 'Network Routes' setup. Currently I am limited to using 'All to Tunnel' because any other setting fails to allow me to connect to the office system. Do you think you can lend some help with this configuration so that I can setup the VPN and still access the web?