With the COVID-19 global pandemic forcing nearly everyone to work from home these days, organizations that implemented force tunneling for their VPN clients are likely encountering unexpected problems. When force tunneling is enabled, all client traffic, including Internet traffic, is routed over the VPN tunnel. This often overloads the VPN infrastructure and causes serious slowdowns, which degrades the user experience and negatively impacts productivity. This is especially challenging because so many productivity applications like Microsoft Office 365 are optimized for Internet accessibility. It is one of the main reasons that force tunneling is not generally recommended.
Force Tunneling with Exceptions
When enabling split tunneling is not an option, administrators frequently ask about enabling force tunneling with some exceptions. The most common configuration is enabling force tunneling while still allowing Office 365 traffic to go outside of the tunnel. While this is something that third-party solutions do easily, it has been a challenge for Always On VPN. Specifically, Always On VPN has no way to route traffic by hostname or Fully-Qualified Domain Name (FQDN).
Exclusion Routes
To address this challenge, the administrator can configure Exclusion Routes. Exclusion Routes are supported in Windows 10 1803 with update KB4493437, Windows 10 1809 with update KB4490481, and Windows 10 1903/1909.
Exclusion routes are defined in the client routing table that are excluded from the VPN tunnel. The real challenge here is determining all the required IP addresses required for Office 365.
Microsoft Published Guidance
Given current events and the heavy demands placed on enterprises supporting exclusively remote workforces, Microsoft has recently published guidance for configuring Always On VPN force tunneling while excluding Office 365 traffic. Their documentation includes all the required IP addresses to configure exclusions for. This will make it much simpler for administrators to configure Always On VPN to support this unique scenario. The following links provide detailed configuration guidance for enabling force tunneling for Always On VPN with exceptions.
- Optimize Office 365 connectivity for remote users using VPN split tunneling
- Optimizing Office 365 traffic for remote workers with the native Windows 10 VPN client
- Implementing VPN split tunneling for Office 365
Additional Information
Windows 10 Always On VPN Split vs. Force Tunneling
You may encounter a scenario in which Outlook on Windows 10 reports that it is working offline while connected remotely via DirectAccess. The Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI) shows DirectAccess is in a connected state and all other internal resources are accessible.
