How Not to Use Default Gateway on VPN (PPTP) in Mac OSX


Well, after searching for hours and hours, I have finally found a solution to a small but troublesome problem. The problem (if you call it that) occurs when I tried connecting to my work’s VPN. Rather than not using my work’s gateway when connected, OSX does this by default. Hence, you can see and hit your internal IPs but not resolve the rest of the internet.

In Windows XP, this may be disabled via the following:

  1. Open Network Connections
  2. Under Virtual Private Network, open the Properties of your connection
  3. Click and open Properties for “Internet Protocal (TCP/IP)”
  4. Click on Advanced
  5. Disable “Use default gateway on remote network”
  6. Hit OK, OK, and then you’re done

Although it’s easy in Windows XP, I couldn’t figure it out for OSX. I searched and search to finally get this article from macosxhints, Avoid Creating PPTP Default Routes. The hints at the very bottom of the comments helped somewhat, but didn’t get me to view my internal IPs—which was the reverse of the original problem. Luckily, with a little bit more search, I landed on this article page by Christian Stocker on Changing default routes on OSX on VPN. Though it was the same as the previous page from macosxhints, I saw this short and sweet reply which happen to have fixed everything:

lonnie @ 22.08.2006 19:22 CEST
Internet Connect 1.4.2 has

Connect Menu -> Options…

|X| Send all traffic over VPN connection

Unchecking should do the same.

I hope this article could be of help, and save those who are looking for the same solution sanity and time.