VPN and DNS resolution problems from clients

[Ken]

Windows 2000 VPN...RRAS uses pool of addresses, NOT using
DHCP to assign addresses to clients.

clients use various methods to access the internet (dial
up, DSL, cable, etc), then connect to the VPN using the
vpn connection over the internet.

We're seeing intermittent problems where clients can't
access Exchange email becuase the client can't resolve
the DNS name of the Exchange server. Pings fail. It
works sometimes (can ping), and fails other times. The
client appears to be using the internet DNS instead of
the DNS for the VPN session.

If you do an IPconfig, the DNS entries for the VPN
connection act strange. One time, it shows the two DNS
entries passed by the RAS server. Another time, it shows
two internet DNS addresses (apparantly from the forwarder
list from the DNS server (also running on the vpn server)
along with the local DNS entries...but those local dns
addresses are listed twice.

any ideas?

 

[Bill Grant]

Have you tried turning off the "obtain DNS automatically" in the client's
connection properties and entering your local DNS server address manually?

 

[Andy Yew]

I have the same exact issue.. Gonna try out the suggestion which I
did a few days back but wasnt successful.