client cannot browse www

[skipit79]

I have wingate installed in a windows 2003 active directory environment. I have my client’s default gateway set to the wingates private IP address, DNS servers of the client are set to my two AD DNS servers. The history screen of wingate shows the www request I made, but the client will not open the web page. My wingate server was configured from option three in the manual. It is on the same network as every client and server machine in my network.

- I’ve opened up the Qbik Wingate engine service and made the appropriate “log on as” setting to an admintrative account.

- I’ve opened up the advanced settings and excluded my internal DNS servers.

- I’ve successfully connected to the AD database through database options.

- I have DHCP disabled on the wingate server, however for my test machine I have the IP’s typed in manually for now.

- RRAS is installed on the wingate server, configured as a router.

What settings am I missing? Help is greatly appreciated!

[adrien]

Hi

So what actually happens? Does the connection time out to the client and get shut down, or do you get some error back to the browser? Or does the connection just keep showing there indefinitely?

It's unusual that it would take a very long time to do anything or no response once you get a request showing in the activity screen.

Do you have any WinGate plugins installed or caching enabled (just wondering about maybe permissions for access to the file system)?

Regards

Adrien

[skipit79]

Thank you for the reply!

I open up IE7 and type in yahoo.com and 'Connecting to 209.191.93.52...' is at the bottom of my browser and stays there several minutes then IE displays "Internet Explorer cannot display the web page".

When I try different web addresses the connecting to ip address changes to the corresponding web address I've typed in the address bar. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc. will all display their ip address at the bottom, but no web page will display. I ping web addresses in DOS and it will resolve the correct ip addresss.

I can access internal network resources, can print to network printers, open up network drives/files, etc.

I have caching enabled, no plugins are installed.

[Nev]

How is the client browser options set to?

Does it have the IP Address of the Wingate server and WWW port, usually 80?

What happens on the Wingate machine if the browser is set to the localhost IP 127.0.0.1 and WWW port?

[skipit79]

My client browser has no additional settings, however when I enter the IP address of the wingate server and port 80 into the proxy settings on my client it shows at the bottom of the browser 'Waiting for URL/login.htm'. It will wait there for quite some time with no errors or login screen displaying. The URL from above was yahoo.com, but the forum didn't allow me to submit the whole URL.

On the wingate server it gets a little more confusing I'll try to break it down by scenario.

Scenario 1:
NIC has internal DNS servers set for primary and secondary, In Wingate Advanced Options the DNS servers are entered in. When I type in 127.0.0.1 and port 80 into the browsers proxy setting I get "The website cannot display the page" HTTP 500 Internal Server error. When I remove the proxy settings from the browser on the wingate server the internet will work.

Scenario 2:
When I set the NIC to use my ISP's DNS servers and plug in 127.0.0.1 and port 80 for the proxy settings the internet comes up. Which makes sense to me since I excluded my internal DNS server in advanced options.

When I try scenario 1 from above and remove the internal DNS servers from Advanced Options while keeping the proxy settings the internet will work.

[adrien]

HI

removing your internal DNS servers from WinGate (by entering them into WinGate advance options) is only necessary if those DNS servers are configured to forward to WinGate. This "breaks the loop" that would then be created.

However, if your internal DNS servers forward out to something else (not WinGate), then it's fine to use these as the DNS server for WInGate, in fact it may be required if these are the only DNS servers accessible to WinGate that can resolve internet names.

Regards

Adrien

[skipit79]

Ok, I believe I have the DNS configuration correct. However, the default gateway on the client machine seems to be my issue. My client is set to use the wingate server as the default gateway (no proxy settings in the browser) and the internet will not come up.

I'm trying to implement scenario 3 from the wingate installation manual. By going with scenario 3 do I have to manually configure each client browser to point at the wingate proxy? My goal is to make each client connect to the WWW through the wingate server without having to configure any client browser manually. Do I need to use either NAT or the WGIC to accomplish that? If NAT is an option then I’m assuming I’ll need the wingate server to have two NICs (internal and external) for that to work, Correct?

[adrien]

Hi

You don't need more than one NIC for NAT in WinGate, it will quite happily do it with one.

You did install the extended networking driver I take it?

Does anything else work other than WWW? tracert or ping?

If you're on an AD, you can push browser proxy settings out with group policy. This is recommended over NAT/intercepting connections which has some issues if you require auth at the proxy.