Internet drops when connected to VPN

[Sam33]

With the lovely world of COVID I work from home full time now. When I attempt to connect to my VPN for work my internet connection drops. 

[shaw-tony]

@Sam33 what troubleshooting steps have you tried so far? Have you contacted your admin team regarding VPN settings to ensure there are no issues? Do you have any 3rd party routers/switches attached to the modem?

[Sam33]

I have the Shaw Modem (3848) in Bridge Mode and have a Deco 5 WiFi Mesh set up providing wifi to the house. When I disconnect from my Shaw service and use my mobile data to connect to my VPN I have no issues. I've tried running the modem both bridged and unbridged. I have disabled the WiFi (2.4 and 5) on the modem itself.

[mdk]

@Sam33 -- When I attempt to connect to my VPN for work my internet connection drops. 

With your VPN-client active, all your Internet traffic is routed to that corporate VPN-server.  So, if you have several open windows (on a desktop/notebook) or apps (on a smart-phone), those sessions become disconnected. For example, if you have an E-mail client that is connected to a mail-server using your non-VPN public IP-address (as supplied through your bridged router), and you enable VPN, the mail-server will not be able to communicate with your computer.

Does your corporate VPN-server allow "incoming" traffic to some site, e.g., that mail-server, to "exit" from the VPN-server, to go "out" to the Internet, to connect to the mail-server?

In summary, the VPN-client/VPN-server is working as designed -- putting all your traffic through a "tunnel". Compare to driving on the #2 highway from Calgary to Edmonton, but not being allowed to take any exit (specifically onto the #13 highway to Camrose) until you get to Edmonton, and then being forced to take the #21 highway to "back-track" to Camrose. If the VPN-server in Edmonton does not allow you to transfer to #21, you will not be able to get to Camrose.