Quoting Carl Zeilon <pclinux at charter.net>:

> First, I'm totally new to VPNs.  My wife is set up with a VPN to connect
> to work from home.  If I use a wired connection to my router, everything
> functions fine.  If I use the wireless card, failure.  After a bit of
> Googling I tried connecting through a neighbor's unsecured wireless
> network.  Tada... the VPN works.  So, my question is this - Can you only
> use a VPN when you are connected to an unsecured wireless network?  I
> can't use WPA & VPN at the same time?  Is there something else I'm missing?
>
> Thank you,
> Carl
>

Your router is likely doing bad things to the IP packets(icky natting), 
if your
wife is using an IPSec VPN (probably is) they can be very picky about anything
tinkering with the packets. Look for a VPN Passthrough option in the router
config, that will typically help.

Josh