GlobalProtect HTTPS Connection Slow Startup

[Benjamin Cardon]

Hi all,

This is somewhat related to a question I posted a few months ago about
how at my office the GlobalProtect VPN doesn't want to connect using
ESP which seems to be causing me issues. I can't convince my network
folks to really figure out why ESP isn't working inside the office.
Unfortunately, it's not working for anyone else either and there isn't
much priority to get it fixed.

So for now, I'm hoping that maybe I can attack this problem from a
different direction. Even though I can't connect through ESP, I can
connect through HTTPS. However, when I connect via HTTPS, the VPN
takes 20+ minutes to become fully functional for some reason. I turned
on verbose logging and I was trying to understand what's happening,
what I see is hundreds to probably thousands of logs that look like
this:

Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.573 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] Sending IPv4 data packet of
40 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 40 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 40 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 1422 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 1422 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.573 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] Sending IPv4 data packet of
1422 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 1422 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 1422 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.573 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] Sending IPv4 data packet of
1422 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 1422 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] Sending IPv4 data packet of
1422 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 1422 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] Sending IPv4 data packet of
52 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 52 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 52 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: No work to do; sleeping for 10000 ms...
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] Received IPv4 data packet of
798 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Received IPv4 data packet of 148 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Received IPv4 data packet of 53 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] Received IPv4 data packet of
53 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Received IPv4 data packet of 199 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] Received IPv4 data packet of
53 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Received IPv4 data packet of 57 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] RX packet 0x5aa023c90270(52)
[10382] [used 10384]
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: RX packet 0x5aa023c5a060(52)
[10383] [used 10384]
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 52 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 52 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] No work to do; sleeping for
10000 ms...
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: No work to do; sleeping for 10000 ms...
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] RX packet 0x5aa023c641a0(52)
[10384] [used 10385]
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 52 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] No work to do; sleeping for
10000 ms...
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.574 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] RX packet 0x5aa023c58830(60)
[10385] [used 10386]
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 60 bytes
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.575 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] No work to do; sleeping for
10000 ms...
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: 2024-11-12 14:57:50.575 INFO
[2811] [GPClient::onVPNLogAvailable at 518] RX packet 0x5aa023c5a870(103)
[10386] [used 10387]
Nov 12 14:57:50 xps15 gpclient[2811]: Sending IPv4 data packet of 103 bytes

(As a reminder, I'm using a UI app that helps facilitate my login flow
which is what gpclient represents)

These logs keep happening for a long time until something finally
happens (that I haven't seen a log to associate it to) that starts
allowing traffic through consistently. Even after the connection
starts randomly working, these logs persist which suggests to me that
they represent normal traffic flowing through the VPN but my question
is, is there anything I can do to figure out why the VPN takes so long
to start passing traffic through consistently? Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!
Ben