Detecting Wired, Wireless, and VPN Connections using PowerShell

In a recent customer project we needed to detect whether the clients where connected via Wired, Wireless (WiFi) and/or VPN. This was a decent sized environment, about 50K clients, with hardware models from both HP, Dell, and Lenovo. The existing code I had did not work across all the hardware, so I reached out to the ConfigMgr community, and got some great tips from Adam Gross, Vegard Søbstad Alsli, Mattias Cedervall, and Jordan Benzing. After a good few hours of testing, it all ended up with the script further down this post:

The script detects the following VPN platforms

• Palo Alto GlobalProtect
• Cisco
• Juniper
• Dell VPN (Sonicwall)
• F5 Networks VPN 

The script filters out the following virtual platform host switches

• Hyper-V
• VMware
• Virtual Box

Update: I replaced the various where-object lines I had with -Filter after getting a friendly tip from Jeffrey Snover on Twitter, after he read this post. Put it this way, there are people you argue PowerShell syntax with, and there are people you don't argue PowerShell syntax with 🙂

Note: If you want the script to output the result as a task sequence variable in ConfigMgr, in this case setting the results as the TSConnectionType variable, simply change the last line to these lines:

# Write-Output "Connection type is: $ConnectionType"
$TSEnv = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.SMS.TSEnvironment
$TSEnv.Value("TSConnectionType") = $ConnectionType

I would love to get your feedback on the main script.

#Get Connection Type
$WirelessConnected = $null
$WiredConnected = $null
$VPNConnected = $null

# Detecting PowerShell version, and call the best cmdlets
if ($PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Major -gt 2)
{
    # Using Get-CimInstance for PowerShell version 3.0 and higher
    $WirelessAdapters =  Get-CimInstance -Namespace "root\WMI" -Class MSNdis_PhysicalMediumType -Filter `
        'NdisPhysicalMediumType = 9'
    $WiredAdapters = Get-CimInstance -Namespace "root\WMI" -Class MSNdis_PhysicalMediumType -Filter `
        "NdisPhysicalMediumType = 0 and `
        (NOT InstanceName like '%pangp%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like '%cisco%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like '%juniper%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like '%vpn%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like 'Hyper-V%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like 'VMware%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like 'VirtualBox Host-Only%')"
    $ConnectedAdapters =  Get-CimInstance -Class win32_NetworkAdapter -Filter `
        'NetConnectionStatus = 2'
    $VPNAdapters =  Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -Filter `
        "Description like '%pangp%' `
        or Description like '%cisco%'  `
        or Description like '%juniper%' `
        or Description like '%vpn%'"
}
else
{
    # Needed this script to work on PowerShell 2.0 (don't ask)
    $WirelessAdapters = Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\WMI" -Class MSNdis_PhysicalMediumType -Filter `
        'NdisPhysicalMediumType = 9'
    $WiredAdapters = Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\WMI" -Class MSNdis_PhysicalMediumType -Filter `
        "NdisPhysicalMediumType = 0 and `
        (NOT InstanceName like '%pangp%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like '%cisco%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like '%juniper%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like '%vpn%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like 'Hyper-V%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like 'VMware%') and `
        (NOT InstanceName like 'VirtualBox Host-Only%')"
    $ConnectedAdapters = Get-WmiObject -Class win32_NetworkAdapter -Filter `
        'NetConnectionStatus = 2'
    $VPNAdapters = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -Filter `
        "Description like '%pangp%' `
        or Description like '%cisco%'  `
        or Description like '%juniper%' `
        or Description like '%vpn%'"
}


Foreach($Adapter in $ConnectedAdapters) {
    If($WirelessAdapters.InstanceName -contains $Adapter.Name)
    {
        $WirelessConnected = $true
    }
}

Foreach($Adapter in $ConnectedAdapters) {
    If($WiredAdapters.InstanceName -contains $Adapter.Name)
    {
        $WiredConnected = $true
    }
}

Foreach($Adapter in $ConnectedAdapters) {
    If($VPNAdapters.Index -contains $Adapter.DeviceID)
    {
        $VPNConnected = $true
    }
}

If(($WirelessConnected -ne $true) -and ($WiredConnected -eq $true)){ $ConnectionType="WIRED"}
If(($WirelessConnected -eq $true) -and ($WiredConnected -eq $true)){$ConnectionType="WIRED AND WIRELESS"}
If(($WirelessConnected -eq $true) -and ($WiredConnected -ne $true)){$ConnectionType="WIRELESS"}
If($VPNConnected -eq $true){$ConnectionType="VPN"}

Write-Output "Connection type is: $ConnectionType"