VPNs

[MarkB]

We have 2 remote sites that need to be connected back to the school network, so I set up RRAS as a VPN server, and got the ports and protocols opened for PPTP (still trying to get L2TP to work externally) and it worked, but only for one machine at a time (as I later found out a problem with PPTP through NAT), so I set up a box with debian with 2 network cards to work as a router (using NAT and masquerading I believe) and got that to connect to the VPN. This almost seems to work, all the machines at the remote site can access machines at the school, apart from when you try to use windows file sharing to access a server, at which point it fails if 2 machines try to access the same server, for example I log one remote machine on and it works fine, I log a second machine on and the first one pops up a message saying I am now working off line as is unavailable. I am assuming this is caused by the fact to the file server this is all coming from the same IP address. I had several machines constantly pinging the server from the remote site and all seemed to work fine, as far as I can tell everything else is working fine.

 

Anyone got any clue as to what I'm need to be doing to get this working?

[SYNACK]

The file server should not think that they are all comming from the same machine as each VPN client is given its own unique IP address probably from the DHCP pool. Are your remote clients all connected individually via a Windows VPN connection or as a group through something like a linksys router that can act as a VPN client.

 

Just a guess but if is is only Windows file sharing that is behaving like this could it have something to do with CALs for the client machines. It depends on your liscencing model but if there are no CALs in use for the remote machines it may only support one unliscenced connection at once.

 

I would look in the event log of the server that you are trying to connect to to see if it reports anything out of place.

[MarkB]

They are all connecting through a linux box that is acting as a router so each site only has 1 vpn connection active. The windows server only sees the IP of the linux box.