VPN and file sharing

[david90]

I have a wireless router connected to the internet with several computers connected to it. One of the computer connected to the wireless router is a VPN server (XP). When I connect to the VPN server computer from the internet, I could only see the shared files on the VPN server and not the shared files on other computers that are on same network.

Is it suppose to be like this? What can I do to see shared files on other computers?

 

[axegrinder]

Hey David

Had something similar, have a VPN router (Linksys RV042) as opposed to your VPN server. Also use PPTP for the setup. Have four people that tunnel in, no one can see shares. Nature of the beast what would solve this problem is setting up a WINS server, but for what we are doing it just does not justify.

The good news! You should still be able to target your other computers and networked printers. I just have short cuts set up on the remote computers try targeting one of the computers you can't see via IP address one of mine would be \\192.168.90.20\ (use Explore) this would show all the shares available on that computer from there just drag one of the shares to your desktop and create a shortcut. The printers are a little different do the same thing drag the printer to the desktop it will prompt you to download the driver (providing it's a printer attached to a PC) after it gets its driver it will place itself in with the rest of your printers and you can delete the shortcut off your desktop. All of what I described can be setup off site just need the IP address of the machines.
Ex:
\\192.168.90.20\Documents (shared doc folder on PC)

One other thing notice I'm using 192.168.90.*** as opposed to the common 192.168.0.*** or 192.168.1.***. I'm going to assume you have some sort of private addressing going on like me. The reason is if one of the remote computers is on a Lan with the same addressing scheme it might cause havoc with shortcuts. So try to make your addressing scheme somewhat unique.

Hope this helps .

John

 

[david90]

Thanks I'll try it.

Is it better to use a VPN router or setup a VPN server on a PC?

 

[axegrinder]

Thanks I'll try it.

Is it better to use a VPN router or setup a VPN server on a PC?

No I don't think there is an advantage of my VPN router over your VPN server. As you said you can see the shares on the VPN server, I have to target everything though IP address. Only thing I forgot mention which you probably figured out if targeting other machines though IP the address must remain the same.
With my setup like I said there are four remote users they only have to target one share on one machine and also 2 printers and target an AIX server (The AIX server could be targeted through port forwarding if I chose)

One warning if you decide on a VPN router like I have (Linksys RV042) It supports only 5 tunnels for PPTP. The router does have Linksys own “QuickVPN” which supports 50 tunnels. You have to install client software on all of your remote machines. QuickVPN does work well if you are targeting a machine and want an application like “remote desktop”, “telnet” or something like that. IT DOES NOT support Microsoft shares no matter what you do. A feature of these routers is also VPN “gateway to gateway” so two sites say site “A” 25 users and has say my AIX server, site B 20 users that need the server also on site “A”. With two RV042's one at each site use “gateway to gateway” no PC's to configure, works really well and seamless. But there again I used my AIX server which is targeted with as Hyper-terminal type program “Multiview” which is using telnet. Again Windows shares are out the window.