IKEv2 Keeps Disconnecting: The VPN That Stayed Connected from Airport Wi-Fi to 5G

The client’s presentation was open, my headset was connected and the airport lounge Wi-Fi showed full signal. Then the VPN icon disappeared. The meeting application changed to “Reconnecting,” and the slides stopped advancing for everyone except me. I blamed the lounge network, switched the laptop to my phone hotspot and restarted the IKEv2 connection. It worked—until I walked toward the gate and it dropped again.

I had chosen IKEv2 for exactly this kind of travel day.

It has a reputation for connecting quickly and coping well with mobile devices. I was carrying a Windows laptop and phone through an airport, moving between lounge Wi-Fi, mobile data and whatever connection would be available after landing.

The setup looked sensible. The VPN provider was established, its application was familiar and IKEv2 was the option I expected to tolerate movement.

Instead, movement was what kept breaking it.

That mattered because the airport was no longer dead time between two pieces of work. It was the place where the work had to happen. Business travellers are still holding calls and completing projects while dealing with more disruption and operational complexity. (RFC 4555) The lounge, gate and hotel lobby have become temporary offices.

My immediate requirement was narrower: remain inside one client meeting while walking from the lounge to the departure gate.

I rejoined through the phone hotspot and apologised for the interruption.

For three minutes, everything behaved normally. The client continued speaking, the slides advanced and the shared document updated in real time.

Then the laptop screen dimmed while I listened.

When I touched the trackpad, the meeting was frozen. Windows still showed the VPN as connected, but no page would load. Disconnecting IKEv2 restored the internet immediately.

I connected again.

The same cycle returned after the next gate announcement.

The failure felt random because it did not always look the same. Sometimes the VPN icon vanished. Sometimes it stayed visible while traffic stopped. Sometimes the application remained on “Reconnecting” until I gave up and disconnected it manually.

So I began with the obvious fixes.

I chose another nearby server. The new route connected quickly, then failed when the laptop moved back to airport Wi-Fi.

I disabled sleep. That kept the laptop awake, but the tunnel still dropped as the lounge signal weakened near the departure screens.

I returned to the hotspot and placed the phone beside the laptop. The connection lasted longer, then stalled when the phone moved from strong 5G to a weaker mobile signal.

By then, the pattern was no longer random.

IKEv2 worked while the network beneath it stayed still. The trouble began when the laptop changed connection, woke from inactivity or passed through another router.

The protocol was not travelling as well as I was.

IKEv2 commonly uses UDP ports 500 and 4500, and routers, firewalls or network-address translation systems can interfere with that traffic. Airport Wi-Fi, a mobile carrier and a hotel router may therefore treat the same tunnel differently.

IKEv2 also includes a mobility mechanism intended to preserve a connection when a device’s address changes. In real use, however, the provider, operating system and surrounding network all have to handle the change cleanly. Mine were not.

A short public discussion described the same practical frustration: the VPN appeared stable until a device was left idle, then returned without the protection the user expected. The status icon was not enough. What mattered was whether traffic was still moving.

I had been treating the word “IKEv2” as a guarantee.

It was only the name of one part of the connection.

The established provider still had obvious strengths. It had years of public history, extensive support material and many server locations. None of those advantages moved the client meeting from the lounge to the gate.

I could have continued changing servers and digging through Windows settings.

The boarding queue was already forming.

At that point, I no longer needed another explanation for why IKEv2 was supposed to reconnect. I needed a protected route that recovered before the meeting application gave up.

I opened OnlydogVPN, which I had installed before the trip as a smaller backup.

The app did not start by asking me to choose between protocol names. It organised the connection around the situation. I selected the preset for an unstable, changing network and connected through the phone hotspot.

The client’s voice returned.

The shared presentation caught up to the current slide. A message I had typed during the interruption changed from pending to sent.

Then the gate agent announced boarding.

I lowered the laptop screen, put the phone in my pocket and walked out of the lounge. Near the gate, the hotspot weakened and the laptop found the airport Wi-Fi again.

I expected the meeting to disappear for a third time.

The audio paused.

Then it resumed.

When I opened the laptop fully, the shared document was still connected. The meeting application had not asked me to rejoin, and the VPN was still carrying traffic.

That result changed the comparison.

The smaller app uses HTTP/3-based transport, which is designed to recover more smoothly when a device moves between network paths. The practical difference was simple: the laptop could leave the hotspot and return to Wi-Fi without turning the handoff into another repair job.

With IKEv2, every network change had become an interruption.

With the second option, the meeting continued.

I kept the laptop open until my boarding group was called. The client finished the presentation, approved the revised timeline and asked me to upload the final notes before takeoff.

The document upload began over airport Wi-Fi.

Halfway through, the laptop returned to the phone hotspot. The progress indicator stopped for a moment, then continued from the same percentage. The file reached the client workspace before I joined the queue.

I could not observe the internal router mappings, gateway timers or mobility settings used by every network and VPN service. The visible sequence was clear: the IKEv2 connection repeatedly lost usable traffic when the network changed, while the smaller app recovered and completed both the call and the upload.

Once the file was delivered, I stopped troubleshooting.

That was more valuable than it sounds.

The established provider had already sent me through a sequence of plausible decisions: change the server, disable sleep, reconnect the tunnel and keep the hotspot still. Each step seemed reasonable, but each also made me responsible for holding the entire route together.

The smaller app reduced the problem to the task in front of me.

I did not need to know whether the airport router had discarded an old mapping or whether the VPN client had failed to recognise a new address. I needed the client to finish speaking without hearing me apologise again.

The situation-based preset also removed an unnecessary layer of choice. I was already deciding when to leave the lounge, where to find a power socket and whether the hotspot signal would survive the walk to the gate. Another list of servers and protocol labels was not useful complexity.

The app understood the condition that mattered: the underlying network would keep changing.

The service has fewer locations, a shorter public history and fewer independent reviews than the established provider I tried first. Someone choosing primarily for broad geographic coverage may still prefer the larger network.

My airport problem had nothing to do with the number of countries available.

I already had a recognised provider and a protocol associated with mobile reliability. What I lacked was a connection that could survive the ordinary movements of a travel day: waking the laptop, leaving a lounge, losing Wi-Fi and returning to mobile data.

By the time I boarded, I had stopped asking why IKEv2 kept disconnecting.

The more useful question was why I was still protecting a protocol choice after another connection had already protected the meeting.

The established provider gave me IKEv2 and several ways to restart it. The smaller app gave me a client call I did not have to rejoin.