GRE over IPsec with Cisco ASA
In different scenario’s it is required to configure some kind of routing protocol between two offices, but the routers should be configured to look directly connected to each other. Normally I always configure an IPsec VPN between the two offices and configure an additional GRE tunnel over the IPsec VPN tunnel. In that way the routers look directly connected and adding a routing protocol is no problem.
In the past I noticed several times that the GRE tunnel doesn’t come up, when using a Cisco PIX firewall or a Cisco ASA firewall. When using IOS 6.x on the PIX or 7.x on both hardware platforms, there is a workaround by using the following command:
clear local-host <remote peer>
Cisco has reported this bug in BugID CSCse36327:
The IPSEC tunnel was previously working and either one of the following events occured:
1. the crypto map and/or isakmp has been removed and reapplied to the interface
2. the PIX/ASA is upgraded from version 6.x to version 7.x
3. the PIX/ASA is rebooted
4. The remote IPSEC peer/s is rebooted
All events except 1 occur when a dynamic crypto map is used without a match address statement.
This typically affects only GRE traffic.
In PIX/ASA 7.x, GRE encryption may stop working (GRE packets are sent in clear) after removing and reapplying the encryption. This behaviour is by design in 7.x. If encryption is disabled but GRE packets are coming to the PIX in this time, GRE session is created on the PIX and marked as clear-text one (“do not encrypt”). When encryption is applied back, non-encrypted GRE session still exists on PIX and GRE packets that should be encrypted still bypass crypto map until old session is timed out or deleted. If there is a dynamic routing (OSPF/EIGRP/etc) running over GRE, this GRE session may never timeout and should be cleared manually.
In PIX/ASA 8.0.2, new functionality was introduced with new CLI command: “sysopt connection reclassify-vpn”. Default state is disabled. If this command is enabled, then enabling encryption causes non-encryption sessions to be dropped and reestablished with encryption.
Looks like there is a new command introduced in IOS 8.0.2 as mentioned above, by using sysopt connection reclassify-vpn.
There is also an entry on the Cisco SupportWiki about this problem. So the next time I will try this new command.
René Jorissen
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