Re: VPN clients unable to connect to other resources.

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Dave Nickason [SBS MVP] wrote:
Is the home network using the same subnet (192.168.2.x)? That could cause problems.

Next time I'm at my home PC, I'll VPN in and see what IP info I'm getting from the DHCP server on the SBS. I sort of doubt DHCP as a cause, but it'll only take a second to check.

In the default state, the SBS will admit to having two IP addresses on the LAN network, the LAN Ethernet adaptor and the 'internal' adaptor. It will assign VPN clients addresses from the pool that it initially reserves for RRAS, as shown in the DHCP management. With the link up, looking at the properties of the link at the client will show the PPP adaptor (VPN) as having one of the pool addresses, the other end as having the SBS 'internal' address. The client end of the link will be the gateway, and the netmask is the improbable 255.255.255.255.


You're not missing the concept - if you can connect to \\john\share from a client PC on your LAN, you should be able to do so from a remote VPN client, including ones that do not belong to the SBS domains. You might get some extra password prompts, but that's it (and you can often avoid those by creating a user on the home PC with username and password matching those on the SBS).

Mmmmm. Mmmmmmmmm. I still think there's a lot of goat-sacrificing involved here. The only way I've ever managed completely consistent local-like connections, every time, is when the client was a domain member. Without that, I've had wildly inconsistent results, occasionally not even getting TCP/IP connectivity with the server though the link was reportedly up and the System Event log showed that a normal connection had been made. I think I tried every possible combination of DNS, WINS, hosts, lmhosts and Russ' Master Browser tip. It worked sometimes.

But then I've always found XP's network browsing to be very slow and flaky compared with that of NT4, or even Win95. Last week, a LAN VB client that's been there for months (and powered for at least a week) couldn't see the SBS, and I could only access the shares using the good old Run.. method. Usually, once a client has been kicked like that, the offending machine will turn up in Network Neighbourhood/Places, at worst after restarting Windows Explorer. This one wouldn't, I had to make the file accesses from the Run.. window. But it worked next day, without the slightest trouble, without either client or SBS having been rebooted. Until then, I'd found the Vista clients slightly more efficient at browsing than XP.
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