Cisco VPN Client on the Mac - Strangest Issue Ever

If you are running Mac OSX, the Cisco VPN and have Parallels installed and your VPN connection only stays up for 5 seconds at a time and you are seeing these errors:

Secure VPN Connection terminated locally by the Client.
Reason 422: Lost contact with the security gateway. Check your network connection

Check out this thread.

Basically, you need to disable disable Parallels' networking:

1. Apple > System Preferences > Network
2. Double click "Parallels NAT"
3. Change "Configure IPv4: Using DHCP" to "Off"
4. Click the "Show:" pulldown to find "Paralells Host-Guest"
5. Change "Configure IPv4: Using DHCP" to "Off"

At first read I didn't even consider trying it as it seemed completely outlandish, after getting more frustrated I decided to give it a go. Worked immediately. Obviously, I created a new "Location" with these settings.

Also, if you can't connect at all and see these errors:

Output size mismatch. Actual: 0, Expected: 237.

Check out this thread. Make sure to either reboot or restart the cvpnd process.