Symptoms

• You have a NetGear FVS124G router providing VPN.
• You use IPSecuritas to let Mac users log into that VPN.
• VPN has worked in the past.
• VPN is no longer working and you haven’t changed any settings (in our case there was a power outage and the modem configuration didn’t come back as expected initially then was fixed so all the settings were the same as they used to be).
• In the IPSecuritas log you get a message stating “inappropriate sadb message passed.” and  Phase 1 never actually connects (thus Phase 2 times out because of a lack of Phase 1 connection).

Solution

1. Log into the admin interface of the NetGear router and go to Management->Settings Backup.
2. Click “Back Up” and save the backed up settings file to your local hard drive.
3. Under “Restore saved settings from file” click “Choose file…” and select the file you just downloaded.
4. Click Restore.

If you’re having the same problem I was, your VPN will now work.

Commentary

This is brain dead behavior and I swear I will never buy anything from NetGear again.