"Always Connected" Public Wi-Fi Issue

Hi guys,

 

I have an issue with the "Always Connected" mode in the Edge Client (Win) and connecting to public Wi-Fi hotspots. This is related to a previous posting (https://devcentral.f5.com/questions/-always-connected-ncsi-issue).

 

1. User connects to a guest/public WiFi network with a login page.
2. The F5 Edge Client detects network access and attempts to connect to the VPN.
3. A "Join Network" prompt box is shown with the public Wi-Fi login page.
4. If the user opts to not sign into the public wi-Fi and closes the "Join Network" the user is notified that doing so will put the client into "Disconnected" mode (this is the same message you get if you're using "Auto-Connect" mode and you attempt to terminate the F5 login process).
5. At this point there is seemingly no way to get the client to revert to "Always Connected" mode without uninstalling and reinstalling. The only other way around it is to force the closure of the F5 client, manually configure the F5 Client to turn "Always Connected" off, start the F5 client and then do the same again and turn "Always Connected" back on.

This is a severe issue for the end users. It means that if they opt not to sign into a public Wi-Fi network they could effectively disable the Edge Client from connecting altogether.

 

I have two questions:

 

• Is this expected behaviour and is there an easy way around this?
• When the client is placed in "Disconnected" mode where is this set? Is there a registry setting somewhere that is checked/enabled that we can restore to the default setting as part of a reboot, for example?

Thanks

 

Peter