VPN Error 721 and no router installed!

[Jen]

Hello,

I am trying to connect my home pc (Windows XP Home edition) to my work
pc (Windows XP Professional edition) and I keep getting the error 721
when it tries to verify username and password. It times out and then
gives me the error. I checked with the tech guys at work and
according to their logs there is no sign of me even attempting to
connect. (So incorrect login info is not the issue)

I've done a lot of searching on the web and on the groups and have not
found any solution which applies to my situation. I am connecting
with a cable modem (Motorola SurfBoard) not dsl and I do not have a
router installed. I do however have Norton Internet Security, Norton
Antivirus and Windows firewall installed BUT they are all disabled! I
can't think of anything else to try.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Jen

 

[Robin Walker]

I am trying to connect my home pc (Windows XP Home edition) to my work
pc (Windows XP Professional edition) and I keep getting the error 721
when it tries to verify username and password. It times out and then
gives me the error.

At work, do your PCs have routable public IP addresses, or are they private
addresses behind a NAT router?

 

[jennehere]

I would need to get back to you on that since I am not that technically
familiar with what my office uses. I do know that my work computer's
internal ip address starts with 192 and the static IP address they gave
me to VPN to it from home starts with 66.192.xxx.xxx I'm not able to
even ping the static IP from my home and when I mentioned that to the
tech guys at work I was told that I wouldn't be able too because the
way its setup on their end I can't see anything until I'm successfully
logged in. Does that make sense?

Thanks again for your help,

Jen

 

[jennehere]

Also, tonight for the first time I did get a different error "Error
619: A connection to the remote computer could not be established...
When I tried to connect again I got the infamous 721 error again.

Jen

 

[Robin Walker]

I do know that my
work computer's internal ip address starts with 192 and the static IP
address they gave me to VPN to it from home starts with
66.192.xxx.xxx

That is a clear indication that the network at work operates under NAT, and
you therefore cannot connect directly to your office PC using Remote Desktop
(or, indeed, anything else).

For you to be able to connect using Remote Desktop to your office PC, you
will need to make two changes:

1. At your office router, incoming calls to 66.192.xxx.xxx port 3389 must be
forwarded to your office PC port 3389;

2. In your Remote Desktop client at home, you must make the Registry patches
described in
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;885407
because the RDP Server is behind a NAT router.

 

[jennehere]

Thank you for the help, I will be able to try this tomorrow night as
the system is down for maintainance this evening. I'll let you know
how it goes!

Jen

 

[Robin Walker]

That is a clear indication that the network at work operates under
NAT, and you therefore cannot connect directly to your office PC
using Remote Desktop (or, indeed, anything else).

For you to be able to connect using Remote Desktop to your office PC,
you will need to make two changes:

1. At your office router, incoming calls to 66.192.xxx.xxx port 3389
must be forwarded to your office PC port 3389;

2. In your Remote Desktop client at home, you must make the Registry
patches described in
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;885407
because the RDP Server is behind a NAT router.

Sorry, I just see that I was confused enough to refer to Remote Desktop in
my answer to a question that was about VPN.

The advice I gave about the Registry Patch does apply to VPN connections to
VPN servers behind NAT routers, so that reply stands.

But my references to port 3389 were not correct for VPN connections. The
ports that need to be forwarded will depend upon the VPN technology being
used: for instance, PPTP or L2TP?

 

[jennehere]

Hi Robin,

Unfortunately, that fix did not fix my problem. I even tried
rebooting, removing and recreating the connection and then uninstalling
SP2 and trying to connect. Another coworker is also having trouble
connecting from home and he was going to attempt the fix on his
computer so I'll see tomorrow if it helped for his situation. I'm not
sure what else to try short of throwing the computer out the window.
<GRIN>

Jenne