InTheCloset
May 17th, 2006, 02:57 PM
NT4 network, XP Pro clients, MS Exch 5.5, VPN setup via a SonicWall. From my client at home I can VPN in & access my server. When I try to setup a profile on Outlook for accessing my mail in Exch, it can't find the server unless I enter the IP instead of the name. Even then, that doesn't seem to last long enough to finish the setup. It finds my mail account & converts the server's IP to its name, but can't find the server by the time I'm trying to click 'Finish'. I'm thinking it has something to do with the DNS/Exch connection, but I don't know how I'd fix that.
Am I making any sense, and does anybody know how to fix it?
Thanks in advance...
Archangel122184
May 21st, 2006, 07:36 AM
VPNs and NetBIOS don't play nice. The reasoning is much the same that routers don't forward NetBIOS across networks. The communications are chatty and resolving takes too many handshakes.
There are 3 ways to fix this.
1.) Use a WINS server. Not recomended since they are brutal to setup and use correctly not to mention you'll have to get the VPN to register it.
2.) Use a DNS server and configure all clients to use a FQDN (fully qualified domain name).
3.) Edit your hosts file to point the server NetBIOS name to the remote IP.
I would recomend the third since it will take the least amount of work.
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
There is no file extension. Open the file with wordpad/notepad and add an entry for the server. The format is as follows (don't remove anything already there... most likely only your loop back address):
ip_address server_name