Running NetScreen and Cisco VPN clients on the same workstation

I ran into an issue a couple of months ago where the CPA of one of my customers was having trouble using the NetScreen VPN client ( to talk to my customer’s network ) and a Cisco VPN client ( to talk to another customer ) using the same workstation.

I finally traced the issue down to the fact that both VPN clients use different services to perform encryption and other security functions.  Furthermore, the different services can’t be running at the same time because they provide a singular function on the computer and the first one to host that particular function wins – and prevents another service from running and providing that function.

Once I figured out it was a services issue, it was just a matter of time until I traced down what company used what service. 

Next, I created two batch files to start and stop the relevant services and launch the required VPN client.

start_cisco.bat:

NET STOP IREIKE
NET STOP IPSECMON
NET START POLICYAGENT
NET START CVPND
[ insert vpn client executable here ]

 

start_netscreen.bat

NET STOP POLICYAGENT
NET STOP CVPND
NET START IREIKE
NET START IPSECMON
[insert vpn client executable here]

 

Finally, I created two shortcuts on the desktop to launch the above batch files.