NAT Problems Using Wingate

Sep 16 05 1:27 am

Hi

I Am trying to use wingate to share a broadband internet connection. I have one external nic connected to my cable modem (whose ip, gateway and dns are assigned automatically), another internal nic (a realtec one, ip 192.168.1.1, sn 255.255.255.0, dns and gateway blank) and another internal wireless card (ip 192.168.0.1, sn 255.255.255.0, dns and gateway blank)

I installed wingate 6.0.4 with ENS enabled and checked the network cards are correctly marked internal and external.

windows firewall and ics are dissabled on the server and its running xp professional sp2

Am currently testing with my laptop (win2k), its wireless card set to ip 192.168.0.2, sn 255.255.255.0, gateway and dns 192.168.0.1

if i tell windows to connect via a proxy server it works fine, however if i dont use the proxy it cant seem to look up web addresses. As in Http://www.google.com comes back "server not found" in ie, but http://66.102.7.99 works fine

In wingate the dns service is correctly bound to the 2 internal adapters, but when i look in the DNS/WINS Resolver config there are no DNS servers listed. I tried adding my ISP dns servers into here and also tried adding them into the tcpip config of my internal cards but neither of these ideas worked...

would be greatful for any help with this as i was aiming to mainly use the NAT and not the proxies to connect from the client machines.

Thanks in advance

Faith

Sep 16 05 2:48 am

Hi Faith

I'm no expert but i thought i would take a crack at the most common issue i found when getting NAT to work... cos i have fought through DNS config as well..

Do you get any messages under the Messages Tab when trying to access via NAT ? Reason for this i found that most often NAT failed due to getting access denied as "guest" whereby Wingate is not recognising who you are. If this is the case then it is most likely down to your authentication method.

All the best
J

Sep 16 05 3:58 am

Hey Justin

Thanks for your post, but i dont think its that. I found the problem you mentioned earlier on and forced wingate to authorise on the basis of IP to get round it for now.

I'm starting to think the problem might be with the way i'm setting up the client machine, i dont think its even trying to talk to the server when i give it a web address, only when i give it an IP, any ideas?

Cheers for ur help
Faith

Sep 16 05 4:27 am

Faith

Whether you enter an IP or URL it should still talk to Wingate. The minute you put an IP as a client default gateway is when NAT comes into effect. The fact that you are able to browse to a website using its ip is indication that you are getting good connectivity.

hmm... just reveiwing your first post.. (men never read it correctly the first time hehe).. i see a few things which i need to clarify..

Quote : I found the problem you mentioned earlier on and forced wingate to authorise on the basis of IP to get round it for now.

So am i correct in saying you have set up assumed users ? If so are you using the default system policy for the DNS Server ? Is the default policy set for "users may be assumed" ?

Quote : In wingate the dns service is correctly bound to the 2 internal adapters

Would the DNS service not need to be bound to your external adapter as well.. surely this would be necessary to get DNS resolution from your ISP ? Mind you if that was the case then i guess Proxy wouldnt work either.. hmm

Quote : I'm starting to think the problem might be with the way i'm setting up the client machine

A really silly question i know.. but i have to ask.. is the Auto Detect Settings checked under IE.. *cringe*

Like i said.. no expert... gotta give me points for trying though :)

J

Sep 16 05 4:59 am

Hey,

Yeah i have some assumed users set up and I have all policys set to just "users can access this service" i took it that meant assumed or otherwise and it seems to work. I dont think dns should be bound to the ext adapter or random internet ppl would be able to do dns lookups on the server wouldnt they? And no, the autodetect setting in ie was not checked ;)

I have however fixed it and now look quite silly. I had my firewall on my client machine set to ask me about everything and deny nothing by default, and it seemed to be doing that so i didnt think it was the problem, but it turns out it doesnt notice when u make changes to network config until it restarts again and until then it was just blocking things that it didnt think should be happening... like dns look up...

After restarting the firewall it suddenly started asking would i like to allow services.exe to access 192.168.0.1:DNS and then everything worked.
Ooops

Thanks loads for your suggestions tho

Faith

Sep 16 05 12:43 pm

Hi,

I just wanted to add something about the user guest failing authentication. If you're seeing this message as a NAT error then it usually indicates that the WinGate guest account it disabled. This is not a good idea and you should receive a warning when you try to disable it.