VPN Connection

How can i have both interenet connection and vpn connection at the same time? i can connect with my toshiba laptop to my dell laptop via VPN but the problem is as soon as vpn connects, the internet will disconnect from toshiba? is there any way to have both connection?
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Are both these laptops running Windows? If so, look under the properties of the VPN connection for a tickbox that says 'Use gateway on remote network'. It is probably ticked, which means that when your VPN comes up all your traffic gets routed over it to the other laptop. If you untick the box then only traffic destined for the network at the other end of the VPN will travel across it and your other (internet) traffic should use the local default gateway as normal.
Note that if your VPN stops working properly with the box unticked then you need to set up the routing properly to achieve what you want it to do rather than relying on just sending everything across the VPN (with the box ticked).
Hope that makes sense. Let us know how you get on.

Hi Bubeeza,

Once you start your VPN connection, your laptop becomes part of the remote network to which you have connected to via the VPN itself. Unless and until you do as Bishop recommended (and there is a condition to that, read the next paragraph), it's doubtful you will be able to use local resources i.e internet connectivity, local network resources etc.

I had the same problem before, and after extensive searches and study, I found out that unless the VPN provider explicitly configures your connection to be able to allow non VPN traffic or access local network resources, you wont be able to do so. It's all about security, and the argument is, that if you are able to communicate to local resources and the Internet, then you are basically merging the Internet with the remote network with which you connected via VPN. This is true for Cisco VPN, but some other VPN softwares allow this feature by default.

Let me know if you manage to find a solution to this problem