Dread Error 51: Unable to communicate with the VPN subsytem

See the screengrab below  and the discussion on Anders.com

Solution

I lived with this error for a couple of weeks and resorted, ridiculously, to submitting work to the server via ftp.

It finally occurred to me maybe I should try repairing file permissions.  Read, Write and execute permissions often get fouled up for some reason on the Mac OSX when new programs are installed.  I've been told many times to repair them regularly using Apple's Disk Utility, which makes this a snap.  But I always forget and of course hadn't run it in some time - frankly in several months.  The last time I ran it was after having headaches due to unexpected behavior in some application or other.

So finally I put together the concept of unexplaiened behavior with Cisco VPN and file permissions.  It took me about 45 seconds to open Disk Utility and hit repair and wait for it to complete.  I then rebooted the computer and voila - Cisco VPN loaded like it always had before, no Error 51!

Error 51: Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem