Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 RRAS seems to be limiting connections

[Mark Wilson]

Earlier today I started to flatten my network, removing an ISA Server and
replacing it with a Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 machine running RRAS.

The network looks like this

Internet
|
ADSL Modem Router
Internal interface = 192.168.17.1/24
|
LAN1 192.168.17.0/24 - 100Mbps Ethernet and 54Mbps WiFi (802.11g)
|
RRAS Server interface 1 = 192.168.17.2/24 and 192.168.17.12/24, Default
gateway = 192.168.17.1
RRAS Server interface 2 = 192.168.11.1/24, No default gateway.
|
LAN2 192.168.11.0/24
|
Various servers including NAS on 192.168.11.12/24

Whenever my clients use a wired connection on the 192.168.11.0 network they
are able to access the NAS with no problems; however if they use a WiFi
connection and come through the RRAS server then I can connect to shares and
browse the file structure but attempts to access files result in failures
(from Windows or Macintosh clients). Because they can connect directly with
no issues, I'm thinking that this is an RRAS issue. Please can anyone see
what I might be missing.

I have a static route configured on the ADSL router's internal interface
pointing to the 192.168.11.0 network via 192.168.17.2.

Eventually I will move to a single subnet but there are many other
infrastructure issues to iron out first. Please can anyone offer any advice
as to what might be causing my file access issues?

 

[addy]

Earlier today I started to flatten my network, removing an ISA Server and
replacing it with a Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 machine running RRAS.

The network looks like this

Internet
  |
ADSL Modem Router
Internal interface = 192.168.17.1/24
  |
LAN1 192.168.17.0/24 - 100Mbps Ethernet and 54Mbps WiFi (802.11g)
  |
RRAS Server interface 1 = 192.168.17.2/24 and 192.168.17.12/24, Default
gateway = 192.168.17.1
RRAS Server interface 2 = 192.168.11.1/24,  No default gateway.
  |
LAN2 192.168.11.0/24
  |
Various servers including NAS on 192.168.11.12/24

Whenever my clients use a wired connection on the 192.168.11.0 network they
are able to access the NAS with no problems; however if they use a WiFi
connection and come through the RRAS server then I can connect to shares and
browse the file structure but attempts to access files result in failures
(from Windows or Macintosh clients).  Because they can connect directlywith
no issues, I'm thinking that this is an RRAS issue.  Please can anyone see
what I might be missing.

I have a static route configured on the ADSL router's internal interface
pointing to the 192.168.11.0 network via 192.168.17.2.

Eventually I will move to a single subnet but there are many other
infrastructure issues to iron out first.  Please can anyone offer any advice
as to what might be causing my file access issues?

Hi Mark

I couldn't quite catch the WiFi Bit. What is the range of IP addresses
assgned to the WiFi Clients? What's with the route on the ADSL modem
is that your AP(Access point) ? if yes the it would mean the clients
on WiFi would be in 192.168.17.0/24 subnet. You have a gateway at
192.168.17.2 set to your DSL router. You can access shares when you
are on WiFi in the 192.168.12.0/24 subnet the how could this be RRAS
issue. The file access is over SMB, IP cannot differentiate between
access to a file or browsing the share. Unless your NAS somehow
detects you don't have permissions on this particular share and throws
an access denied. Which leads me to another question what is the error
message which pops up when you access the files.


Could you clarify a bit more on this one.

Thanks
Aditya

 

[Mark Wilson]

Thanks for getting back to me on this Addy.

Just to clarify, the 192.168.17.0 network (LAN1) is a mixture of wired
(100Mbps) and wireless (54Mbps) - the access point (192.168.17.254) is a
separate device to the ADSL router (192.168.17.1) and clients on that network
can use wired or wireless connections to contact the DHCP server and get a
192.168.17.x address.

The route on the ADSL modem (router) is to ensure that the default gateway
knows where to send packets for LAN2 (it's the way that I was advised to set
this up when I had ISA between the two networks, instead of RRAS)

There is no WiFi on LAN2 but wired connections on the 192.168.11.0 subnet
work with no issue. It's only when I'm connected to the 192.168.17.0 subnet
that I have a problem (wired or wireless); hence the reason I suspect my RRAS
config.

Finally, I'm not getting any sensible error messages (hence my
frustration!), just lots of timeouts, files that never open etc. I had
wondered if this was a firewall issue but I can browse to the shares OK...

Very odd!

Mark

 

[addy]

Thanks for getting back to me on this Addy.

Just to clarify, the 192.168.17.0 network (LAN1) is a mixture of wired
(100Mbps) and wireless (54Mbps) - the access point (192.168.17.254) is a
separate device to the ADSL router (192.168.17.1) and clients on that network
can use wired or wireless connections to contact the DHCP server and get a
192.168.17.x address.

The route on the ADSL modem (router) is to ensure that the default gateway
knows where to send packets for LAN2 (it's the way that I was advised to set
this up when I had ISA between the two networks, instead of RRAS)

There is no WiFi on LAN2 but wired connections on the 192.168.11.0 subnet
work with no issue.  It's only when I'm connected to the 192.168.17.0 subnet
that I have a problem (wired or wireless); hence the reason I suspect my RRAS
config.

Finally, I'm not getting any sensible error messages (hence my
frustration!), just lots of timeouts, files that never open etc.  I had
wondered if this was a firewall issue but I can browse to the shares OK....

Very odd!

Mark








- Show quoted text -

Thanks for clarifying the facts Mark.. this seems like the device
either is not allowing you to access the files from the different
subnet. since you are able to browse shares It can't be routing.

A network trace via netmon or wireshark would be helpful to track down
what's the problem.

 

[Mark Wilson]

Thanks Addy. I'll see what I can do to get a network trace set up. Mark

 

[Mark Wilson]

That too! Good suggestion, but most of this infrastructure has been here for
a while. All I've done is replace ISA with RRAS.

Cheers, Mark

 

[Mark Wilson]

Hi Kurt - thanks for responding.

I can confirm that all clients (DHCP or static) are using the correct
default gateway.

Cheers, Mark

 

[Mark Wilson]

Just as a follow-up for all those people who so kindly replied to me here,
I've still not managed to 100% resolve the problem, but my Windows clients
are successfully routing via the RRAS server since I re-ran the configuration
wizard and made sure that it was set up to route between LAN segments
(previously I'd added a the IP addresses from my original ISA Server to an
existing RRAS server, hoping that it would pick up the new interfaces and
start routing them too - obviously it didn't work that way).

The Mac clients are more problematic. pings seem to work (mostly),
suggesting that IP routing is fine, but HTTP sessions are timing out and SMB
is still unsuccessful. I'll have to try some packet capture to find out
what's going on there...

Thanks again for your assistance.