Blocked Internet traffic while on VPN connection

When you connect to a remote network through VPN, sometimes it blocks other internet traffic. For example, Skype or ICQ may stop working. Other Internet aplications may still work but somewhat slow. The reason for that is that while on VPN, all of your Internet traffic goes through the remote network. That network's firewalls may have some ports closed for security reasons. To avoid streaming all the traffic through the remote network and still seeing the network's servers, do the following:

Open the properties for the VPN connection -> Networking tab -> Internet Protocol TCP/IP -> Properties -> Advanced -> General Tab -> uncheck the "Use default gateway on remote network". It will put all the things with local internet in order. Click OK for 3 times and reconnect the VPN.

Courtesy one of my collegues Anton.

This is called "split-horizon tunnel". The configuration is generally frowned upon by the admins of the network you are VPN-ing into. Or at least it should be frowned upon, because you basically become a bridge into their network, and since they don't control your machine, they must assume that it is insecure. Nortel's VPN client, for example, goes to great lengths to not allow this to happen (it changes the routing table to make sure that all traffic goes through the tunnel, and then kills the connection if you do anything funny with the routing)