Remote Desktop

[JoanB]

Hello All,

I have setup a simple vpn connection utilizing a Linksys
router on the corp. end and have configured a software
vpn connection to the network for users who are all
running XP Pro both at home and in the office. I have
also walked users through setting up a RDT connection
after access the corp. nw. This has worked fine until
recently when I added a second windows 2003 server. All
users can still extablish a vpn connection and can browse
company resources via explorer. However, I cannot get a
RDT connection established to the users corp. computer. I
can establish a RDT connection to both servers from their
home but not to their personal pc's. I feel confident
that the client side is fine on both ends because it had
been working fine before and I have changed nothing
there. I know RDT connections function from their homes
because I can connect to both servers via RDT connection
from employee's homes. So, bottom line users can no
longer reach their pc's at work via a RDT connection
after establishing a VPN connetion from home.

Has anyone else come across this?

Thanks,
Joan

 

[Miha Pihler]

Hi Joan,

can then connect when they are in LAN just for test? Do they have any e.g.
firewall installed and turned on?

Mike

 

[Joan]

Mike,

I cannot connect inside the lan either. However, I can
connect to both servers both inside and outside the lan
via a Remote Desktop Connection. We do have firewalls
setup on some machines but these have been setup all
along and we have been able to connect via RDT. What is
so strange is we can connect to both servers but not to
desktops. Win 2003 std servers and all desktops are WIN
XP PRO with SP1.

Any other ideas?

Thanks for your reply,

Joan

 

[Phil]

Usually the setup has some kind of port forwarding turned on to "forward"
the connection request to the users computer. Check your forwarding in
either the router or server.

 

[Miha Pihler]

If you can't connect on LAN then it's not VPN problem. I would check
firewall settings on clients e.g. disable firewall for a minute, test if you
can connect and then enable firewall back. If you could connect while
firewall was down, check firewall settings...

It could be that some personal firewall settings got changed somehow. Also
check if under system properties (right click on My Computer > Properties >
Remote tab > see if there is a checkmark next to "Allow users to connect
remotely to this computer".

Let me know if you still have problems after this...

Mike

 

[Joan]

Hello Mike,

I all of the sudden can connect via rdt to other systems
insided the lan. I couldn't before....I have changed
nothing. One thing I noticed when checking our DHCP
server is that some client machines are recieving two IP
addresses. I have had them reboot and this still happens.
I have recently added a second windows 2003 std server to
our domain. I also noticed that some computer names on
the dhcp server are showing up with less than 15-
characters and some are not. Almost all of the machines
were setup with names longer then 15-characters. I know
there is a NETBIOS limit on names but don't understand
why some computer names are longer than 15 c and others
are truncated down to 15 c. There are two separate scops
setup for dhcp. dns is integrated and we are using ad.
Not sure what is going on?