Re: Is it possible to establish a VPN for road warriors using XP home and a machine running win2000 pro

"Jeff VA" <jcvanallen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1187830779.883097.101390@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,

I work for a small company that has a number of field technicians and
a small central office. The field technicians use laptops running
windows xp home edition. Most of the techicians connect to the
internet via wireless connections (D-Link DI-524's being the most
popular at the moment) The computer in the office is a Dell Precision
650 running Windows 2000 Professional.

Is it possible to establish a VPN using this equipment / operating
systems?

I've attempted to connect using the "Incoming Connections" in 2000 and
the "Connect to a network at my workplace" option in the New
Connection Wizard (XP Home). (If so I've just got something
misconfigured) When I try to connect, the process stalls for several
minutes at the "Verifying user name and password" dialog, then
eventually reports "Error:721 the remote computer did not respond..."

I understand that XP Home isn't designed to authenticate against a
domain, but would that cause this error?

If that option isn't workable, can Open VPN be used to establish the
connection? I don't understand the difference well between the two
technologies, but if OpenVPN uses ca certificates for authentication,
would that circumvent the issue of trying to get XP Home to log in to
the "server".

Thanks in advance,


Remember you need TCP Port 1723 open on any firewall between the server PC and the client. Also the firewall must pass GRE Protocol 47 traffic. You can test that using the tests detailed in the PPTP Ping and VPN Traffic sections on this page...

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0105.mspx

You could use OpenVPN as an alternative. I had it running on a XP Pro box (server) and an XP Pro (client).

What do the field techs need to access through the VPN? Ie. shared files or actual desktops, etc? Secure Shell (SSH) may also be an alternative...

--

Al Jarvi (MS-MVP Windows Networking)

Please post *ALL* questions and replies to the news group for the
mutual benefit of all of us...
The MS-MVP Program - http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights...

.

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