Is it necessary to change my laptop's domain name to RDP?

[Guest]

My laptop XP Pro can RDP all my servers (PDC, Exchange, etc) when I am inside
my LAN. At home I use VPN to establish connection to my LAN but can not RDP
my server. I can ping the servers by IP but not by name. I can use VNC to
establish a session to servers or desktops.

My laptop network ID is WORKGROUP. Is it necessary to rename your machine to
the domain name where you want to RDP? I can RDP another LAN by public IP
that is different from my laptops's domain name.

Any form of help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

My laptop XP Pro can RDP all my servers (PDC, Exchange, etc) when I
am inside my LAN. At home I use VPN to establish connection to my LAN
but can not RDP my server. I can ping the servers by IP but not by
name. I can use VNC to establish a session to servers or desktops.

My laptop network ID is WORKGROUP. Is it necessary to rename your
machine to the domain name where you want to RDP? I can RDP another
LAN by public IP that is different from my laptops's domain name.

Any form of help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

No. Your machine could be in the "BLAH" workgroup or "BLAHDEBLAH" domain
and still use Remote Desktop to control a machine in the "YAY" workgroup or
"YIPPEEYAY" domain.

Sounds like a firewall or IPSEC possibly issue - perhaps (more likely) a DNS
one.

 

[Guest]

Shenan ... thanks.

I will try to investigate the CISCO PIX ... hope to get some clue. While I
am connected to my LAN via VPN, the NET VIEW command times will only reveal
my computers at home and time it will give me the computers that are in
office LAN. Is this phenomena a strong indication that I have problems with
my DNS?

 

[Chris Priede]

Is this phenomena a strong indication that
I have problems with my DNS?

Yes, it is. With your VPN connected, open a Command Prompt window and type
"ipconfig /all".

Identify the connection from the list that is your VPN connection and see if
it has 1) a connection-specific DNS suffix, which should be the domain name
of your AD domain, and 2) DNS server address(es), which should be the DNS
server(s) of your office network. If not, therein lies your problem.

You didn't specify what VPN solution you use, but if the client
configuration is static, there ought to be a way to specify those options in
the client config -- or you can set them through Windows TCP/IP properties.
If it is dynamic, the VPN server should be pushing them to the clients.