No connection, but only on laptop computer

[#1]

@jab1 

"I am experiencing no connection at all (‘You are not connected to the internet’), but only on my Macbook Air."

Yet another mis-direction by a dumbed down systems message, which would have been far more helpful if it said "cannot reach the requested service(s).".

In this case the user is connected to the internet (as in the device has an network address and can send and receive traffic), however, due to the VPN there is a restriction on connecting to the target services, so the service cannot be accessed.  Such is reasonably typical of a VPN going into a secure environment ... or indeed a remote service which choses not to respond at all to connection attempts from designate IP ranges ... often used as VPN exit points.

As I posted recently elsewhere, there is very limited merit in using a VPN, the most reasonable being to provide a remote connection into a secure network, as in connecting to an employer's network.  In such settings restricting access to non-business external services is very common.

[#2]

@Townman I totally get what you are saying. The only time I have used a VPN 'in anger'/for its designated purpose over an extended period was when I was WFH, well before the term became popular, and it was on a dedicated works supplied machine.

I have a VPN , but these days it is on maybe a couple of times a month - if that, to access a couple of sites 'offshore' - legitimate ones.

I personally find it a pain if I forget to turn it off and then try to visit UK sites 'sorry you are not in the UK'. Sorry, but if you don't need it, and most of home connections don't, except as you say for accessing secure networks, then I fail to see why anyone needs one.

[#3]

John,

You make the point about the merits of a VPN very succinctly.  In most cases the only benefit of using a VPN is to the supplier's revenue stream, in that they make money from those who naively believe that there is legitimate benefit in using one.

VPNs have clear technical merits where they are used as a secure tunnel into a private secure network.  All other uses serve only as an attempt to mask one's real location, which in any case is a hit and miss affair dependant on the quality of the IP geo-location data used to infer location.  I am very suspicious of the non-private network use of VPNs, the reasons seem dubious from the use to defeat geo-location access limitations, through to much more nefarious reasons - notably conning people into parting with money on the pretext that somehow they add 'security' to being on the internet.

The suggestion that they defeat some forms of tracking is a tad suspect, given that the majority of internet connections are via dynamic IP addresses.