using ICS together with VPN

[Bill Brehm]

If I have a Win2K workstation with one NIC and and incoming VPN connection,
will enabling ICS allow me to access the internet from a VPN client through
the NIC that the VPN is connected to?

If not, is there NAT for Win2K workstation?

 

[Kurt]

If I have a Win2K workstation with one NIC and and incoming VPN connection,
will enabling ICS allow me to access the internet from a VPN client through
the NIC that the VPN is connected to?

If not, is there NAT for Win2K workstation?

You can access the Internet from a VPN client through the VPN server's
gateway without enabling ICS. In fact, that is the default setting on a
VPN client (Use default gateway on remote network). This behavior can be
disabled in the advanced settings of the VPN client.

If you mean, can you use the client VPN connection (the virtual
interface) as an ICS interface, the answer once again is yes. This will
allow all workstations on the VPN Client's local area network to have
access to the remote network. Normally this requires that you add a
static route TO the remote network VIA the LAN Interface on the machine
with the shared VPN interface on each workstation that needs access to
the remote network. Note that this is a "one-way" connection. You cannot
initiate a session with one of the clients using the ICS gateway FROM
the remote network.

....kurt

 

[Bill Brehm]

Unfortunately, I didn't explain myself well enough.

I know how to set the VPN client. I am using a Win2K workstation (not Win2K
server) as the VPN host. I know the client is trying to talk through the
host if i leave the default setting because once connected I can see it in
ROUTE PRINT and I am no longer able to access any webpages or email servers,
etc. So I assume my VPN host (Win2K workstation) is not doing the job of
forwarding the data from the VPN client out to the internet. So it is on
this VPN host that I was wondering if ICS would allow it to pass from the
VPN connection out to the Internet and then forward replies back to the
client.

There may be other problems like the fact the ICS forces 192.168.0.1 to be
used and that might be a conflict with something else.

I can't easily make a test myself because this particular workstation is
about 10000 miles away and I am afraid to lose contact with it if I make a
wrong setting. I want to be sure of the correct settings and procedure
before I risk a remote change in that PC.

 

[Kurt]

Unfortunately, I didn't explain myself well enough.

I know how to set the VPN client. I am using a Win2K workstation (not Win2K
server) as the VPN host. I know the client is trying to talk through the
host if i leave the default setting because once connected I can see it in
ROUTE PRINT and I am no longer able to access any webpages or email servers,
etc. So I assume my VPN host (Win2K workstation) is not doing the job of
forwarding the data from the VPN client out to the internet. So it is on
this VPN host that I was wondering if ICS would allow it to pass from the
VPN connection out to the Internet and then forward replies back to the
client.

There may be other problems like the fact the ICS forces 192.168.0.1 to be
used and that might be a conflict with something else.

I can't easily make a test myself because this particular workstation is
about 10000 miles away and I am afraid to lose contact with it if I make a
wrong setting. I want to be sure of the correct settings and procedure
before I risk a remote change in that PC.

It's been a long time since I worked with W2KPro as a VPN server. I'm
quite certain that it should allow the client to access the Internet
through it's own connection - Sending packets to the gateway should be
no different than sending packets to any other host on the network.

On the client side, it's local subnet MUST be different than the remote
subnet or it will attempt to use the local interface to reach the
default gateway rather than the VPN adapter.

Enabling ICS on the VPN host will not work. I doubt it's even possible
since the VPN gateway is set up and torn down dynamically when the
client initiates / terminates a VPN session.

Also, just FYI, not that this will solve any problems that you have
now.... Although ICS forces the LAN (Private) IP address to 192.168.0.1
during the setup (and also sets up a DHCP server), you can change the IP
address back to whatever you want afterward and ICS will work just fine
with the exception of the DHCP service.

....kurt