Business LAN and VPN to home network

[Richard Perry]

Previously, I had a Win2K notebook at work connecting thru a VPN to my WinXP
Pro box at home. This was working wonderfully, and I left the VPN connected
for several hours without any issues. My local LAN browsing and internet
surfing seemed to be running at normal speeds. Just this past weekend, I
rebuilt this Win2K notebook to XPSP2. Now it seems that whenever I connect
the VPN, all IP traffic travels thru the VPN. My local network and internet
browsing has drastically slowed down, the traffic on the VPN connection has
greatly increased, and I end up only connecting to the VPN for the few
moments that I might need to at any given point in time.

Is this a behavior difference between 2K and XP, or between XPSP1 and XPSP2,
or was I simply not paying attention to what was really happening back when
I had 2K?

BTW, currently, both the VPN server and client are WinXP Pro SP2, and all
other functions are working fine. However, one difference, I had XPSP2 on
the server, and I believe I had the VPN connection configured to use DHCP
with the 2K client. If I remember right, this was working (I set this up a
long time ago). However, with the client at XPSP2, I must configure a static
IP address for the VPN connection otherwise I get the 733 (or something like
that) error.

Would someone please shed some light on this. I thought I read somewhere
that once the VPN is connected, all traffic will now use that connection,
and that there is no way around that. Not what I want to hear, but is there
anything I can do?

Richard

 

[Bob S.]

Richard,

May not be the correct answer... but...

Under the Properties on the Network Connections, go to the Advanced tab and
be sure to uncheck "Allow other network users to connect through this
computer's Internet connection"

Bob S.

 

[Ken B]

Unfortunately, that's what the VPN is supposed to do--tunnel all the network
traffic to another network. I'm not sure of any explanation for how or if
traffic was going 'around' the VPN to the regular connection...
theoretically, when you connect to a VPN, you're essentially ignoring your
'local' network that you're directly connected to, and using the resources
of the 'foreign' network.

HTH

Ken

 

[Richard Perry]

Thanks. Actually, your plain explanation actually makes so much more sense!
I guess my understanding of a VPN wasn't crystal clear, and this really
cleared it up for me! And it actually makes more sense than what I was
thinking. The question now is this, why did it seem so much faster when my
notebook was Win2K? Could it just be that I was having a lot of good days,
or could there be another explanation of why XP seems slower than 2K?

Most notably is the fact that when I was logged into MSN Messenger on 2K,
and established a VPN to home, there was nothing noteworthy that occurred.
However, on XP, MSN notifies me that I have logged into another location.
That location of course is a different IP address. Perhaps there is a
reasonable explanation for this?

At this point there is no problem, but I would like to gain a better
understanding of why these two scenarios are so different. Any ideas and
input are greatly appreciated!

Richard

 

[Colin C]

Just a thought that you may have missed a setting here.

In the VPN connection properties ther is an option to route thru the
gateway on the remote network or the "normal" gateway, if you are
routing via the remote gateway then the traffic levels through it (the
VPN)will be higher than you may have had if Win2k was set the other way.

Colin C

 

[Richard Perry]

I assume that you are speaking of the TCP/IP settings on the VPN connection,
located by going to the properties of the VPN connection -> Networking -> IP
Properties -> Advanced, and that checkbox located there to use the default
remote gateway. If we are speaking of the same setting, then I can say that
I have that unchecked, and it has made no difference whatsoever.

In Win2K, I do believe that I had this unchecked as well, and it seemed that
all traffic did indeed go thru the local network, but that has seemed to
change in WinXP.

So far, everything I have read on this subject has confirmed that XP does
route all traffic thru the VPN.

If anyone has any conflicting reports, I would be glad to read them!

Richard

 

[Bob S.]

I have set up a simple VPN network with WinXP Home being the host and with
two other clients (one XP Home, one XP Pro) that connect in. I can surf the
web from either client, use UltraVNC between any two or all three at one
time, surf, check email, run diags on the other systems - all without going
thru the VPN connection.

Bob S.

 

[Richard Perry]

You mind sharing how you accomplish this?

Richard

 

[Bob S.]

Richard,

I simply used the Wizards to set up the VPN and as I said in my first post:

"Under the Properties on the Network Connections, go to the Advanced tab and
be sure to uncheck "Allow other network users to connect through this
computer's Internet connection"

Again, I'm only dealing with XP Pro and XP Home boxes. If you need to know
what some of the settings are, I'll be glad to provide specific answers. I
agree with what you say you're reading - "It's not supposed to work" and all
traffic will go via the VPN but that's not the case.

I actually have two VPN setups. One being a Cisco VPN that goes thru a
remote VPN server then routes me to the company servers. The other is the
MS VPN that comes with XP which I use to connect with two other systems for
backing up database files. Both work the same way - after I made the
changes above.

Bob S.