The update is still out on Windows Update, however it has been moved to a
less visible location.
The following steps should help you find it.
1) launch WU of course
2) if your personal settings for the site does not show a link for the
"catalog", select the link to adjust such settings and check the box to show
the link
3) select the catalog link, pick your OS, and open the page more to show an
advanced search to find the item faster
4) in the advanced search enter 818043 or NAT and you'll find it. It's about
750kb.
5) go through the associated download steps to get the installer dropped to
your local drive, then walk through the created directory structure to find
the installation exe.
A few notes:
1) There is an Advanced Networking pack which has nat traversal
functionality (as well as some other cool stuff for peer-to-peer
applications). The nat traversal features in this pack however are targeting
IPv6 and are not going to be used by the standard L2TP/IPSec ras client that
you're looking to update with 818043.
2) This patch gathered a bit of infamy as it conflicted with a very small
number of applications. These applications were inhibiting the proper
loading/running of ipsec services. One of the updates in the patch, whose
intent was to be used by users needing IPSec, would put a computer in a
secured/locked-down mode when the service failed to be allowed to set
potential security filters which might have been required. In this mode,
indeed, connectivity was broken with the expectation that the administrator
would wish to rectify the situation before exposing the computer to
potential attack. After its initial release the patch was removed from WU as
we found that many users who never intend to use L2TP/IPSec were installing
it and reported the incompatibility. In some cases the applications could be
upgraded to versions which stopped blocking IPSec, however, other
applications did not have such an option. The lock-down feature was
therefore removed from the patch and it was re-submitted to WU at a more
subdued distribution level.
3) As hinted above, if your computer is working fine with L2TP/IPSec, either
the original or the current version should not pose a problem. As with most
hotfixes/updates the next OS service pack will include the new
functionality. Users with the initial installation will automatically be
updated to the new version and not need to worry if future purchases of
these applications will lock down their machine. They will of course still
find that those applications inhibit L2TP/IPSec.
4) An easy way to notice if IPSec services aren't able to start is to check
the system event log. The service control manager should log a warning
informing you that this failure occured.
