Question : Problem: VPN connects but doesn't show screen

Hi experts:

I have set up VPN by opening all the correct ports, well one. And, I put in the right CLI commands. I went into the server from home and downloaded the Remote Download Connection, which worked fine. It connects and shows that it is connected, but I cannot see anything. I must be doing somethng really stupid.

Also, on the server, when I  run the Remote Access wizard, it asks for the server name, and I enter the static IP address (not the actual one from the ISP, but the next static IP address up -- the one I use for RWW) and when I save it, it is there when I run it again. But, when I run CEICW for whatever reason, I get an error message and when I come out of that, the IP address I entered in the RA Wizard is now gone.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Answer : Problem: VPN connects but doesn't show screen

If adamfh is correct, it sounds like you're having an issue with network broadcast traffic not traversing the VPN tunnel.  This is completely normal since only "routed" traffic can pass through the tunnel and broadcast traffic is not routable.

When you go to "My Network Places" or "Network Neighborhood" (depending on which version of the Windows client you are using), you expect to see computers show up under either the domain or workgroup that they are members of.  This works fine as long as you are trying to view them from a computer that is located on the same network as those computers.

So, for example, let's your internal network behind your PIX is 192.168.1.0/24 and the VPN client pool of addresses is 172.16.0.0/24.  When you establish a VPN connection, you are assigned 172.16.0.1 as an IP address from the PIX from the client pool.  Next, you try to perform some function that utilizes broadcast traffic and it won't work.  This is because the broadcast traffic does not traverse the 172.16.0.0/24 subnet to go across the tunnel to see the clients on the internal network behind the PIX.

If this is your issue, then I would suggest that you try setting up a WINS server on your SBS and then pushing that out through the PIX to your VPN clients.  WINS essentially lets you perform a directed query for hostnames, which would normally happen via broadcast traffic.  When you direct the hostname query to a WINS server from a VPN client, this becomes routed traffic since you have the WINS server IP address configured on the VPN client and the request will traverse the VPN tunnel.

If you don't already have it setup in the PIX, here is the command to add a WINS server for your VPN clients:

vpngroup wins-server >