I connected to my eWON in the field and got this error message:
I was able to close it but I can’t reach any of my LAN devices. What steps should I take to resolve this?
Hello there
This issue you have is due to an network conflict between your PC and the remote eWON’s LAN.
When eCatcher attempts to establish a VPN connection to your remote hardware, a route is “pushed”
to your pc that essentially says, “When I need to get to this network, go through my tap adapter”.
Issues can arise however when your local PC conflicts with that remote network. In your example for instance,
your PC is getting an IP address of 192.168.120.X from your internal router. Yet when you are connecting to
that eWON, we are trying to add a route to that network to go through the TAP adapter. This is going to conflict.
Windows can only have one route to a specific network at any one time. By adding another route to the same network destination, we will get a conflict.
Examples of network conflicts
Note: /24 is the CIDR notation for 255.255.255.0
| You | eWON (LAN) | Is a conflict? |
|---|---|---|
| 192.168.1.2/24 | 192.168.1.22/24 | ✖ |
| 192.168.2.2/24 | 192.168.4.99/24 | |
| 10.1.10.14/24 | 192.168.3.12/24 | |
| 10.0.0.54/24 | 10.0.0.53/24 | ✖ |
To elaborate a bit further, the issue is due to a network level conflict and not an exact address conflict. This error does not indicate an address in the 4th octet but more so in the network itself.
Ah that makes sense. I’ll talk to my IT department to get this squared away.
Thanks Jose!
In-addition to Jordan’s response, I wanted to add some more specific solutions for this error:
These are some options that will allow you to gain access to your device but all require changing or adding something.
Option #1 -
Change LAN IP (machine IP) of field device and all devices connected to it to be in a different subnet than the PC connecting to the eWON.
Option #2 -
On the PC remoting in, determine which network (wifi or ethernet or both) is causing a conflict and disable it if possible.
If disabling the conflicting subnet is not possible because it’s your only source of internet then using a phone hot spot may be a temporary option for remoting in.
Option #3 -
With the permission of your IT department, install a router on your network that gives out DHCP.
Configure the DHCP scope to be in a different subnet than the eWON LAN IP. Once this is complete, you can connect your PC to this router and will be able to connect to your eWON remotely.
Option #4 -
Use a Virtual Machine to get around the IP conflict.