What network cards do you recommend?

[Sid]

Preferrably some supported natively by Windows 2003 server.

[groch]

seek such with its own win2k3 drivers, thats the best solution, dont relay on those built in windows, thats my advice after using win2k(not 2k3), but its always better to use drivers form the card producent.

[Sid]

no reply? I am just wondering what the qbik team use for testing in their own labs, you would most probably have a preference of some sort?

Cheers
Sid

[genie]

Well, it is hard to recommend some specific make or model - there are people who prefer RTL, while other are crazy about Intel.... Wingate driver follows Windows driver model where the actual hardware is of no importance and the only piece of software aware of it is the actual card driver (at least in ideal world). Therefore, whatever card appeals to you in terms of performance, price tag or overall design should be fine.

[Sid]

OK. It's just that I am having MS PPTP VPN problems, both outbound and inbound.

When I was using two Dlink DFE-530TX nics (davicom chipset), clients outbound PPTP VPN connections to a number of different external VPN servers would stop responding after 1min or so. Funnily enough, this machine used to run Winroute for 2 years and there were no problems at all with in/outbound pptp...so logically it would have something to do with wingate.

When I changed the NICs to Netgear FA-312s outbound PPTP VPN's work fine. Inbound PPTP VPN's to RRAS on the same server as Wingate is still flakey however, and we get a BSOD stop 7f with the first parameter being 0000000d about once a day. The Netgears were not natively supported by W2K3, and Netgear did not have a driver, so I used a W2k0 driver, which may be the problem here.

I have also seen one of the qbik guys posting something about an Intel card dropping buffers.

Hence, why I asked.

Cheers
Sid

[genie]

What version of Wingate are you running?

[Sid]

That was quick :)

Wingate 5.2.2

[genie]

Right. Now, I'll run a check on our PPTP support to fix this timeout problem. As of the NetGear card, we have recently discovered and fixed potentialy BSOD-able code related to these cards so if you want to try the test driver, I can send it to you.

[Sid]

OK. That would be good thanks.

[Sid]

Any idea as to when I could have that patch? Normally the system recovers from the blue screen, but when the Wingate history files get corrupt, Wingate hangs. This has been a long term problem with Wingate - why don't you just zero these files them on a Wingate startup, or provide a setting to do so? - would save a few hassles.

[genie]

Hi,

I sent you the driver on Friday - didn't you receive it?

[Sid]

Cheers for that. I loaded it on then rebooted the machine (I was not sure as to when qbikhkxp.sys was loaded). Unfortunately I did not get to run it long enough to see if it fixed the bluescreen problem, as then our outbound pptp connections were being cutoff after a few minutes, so I had to revert.

I think I'll try different network cards...what a trial.

[Sid]

Right, have changed the NIC's to 3com 3c905B-TX cards. Outbound pptp is behaving which is good. Will test inbound when I get home.

Any known issues with these cards?

Cheers

[genie]

Erm... Not that I am aware of. By the way, for inbound PPTP you will need to open/redirect two ports: 1720 and 1503 if I remember correct.

[Sid]

OK. Should I just open these ports or do I redirect them?
I've never heard of 1503 before.

[genie]

Open or redirect depends on where your server is located - open the ports if PPTP server is on the same machine as Wingate and redirect them is PPTP is being served by oine of your intranet machines.

[genie]

Ooops... Just got corrected - port 1723 (thanks, Larry! )

[Sid]

Yeah I gathered you meant 1723. So wingate can redirect pptp/GRE to an internal machine? (not that I need to)

Cheers

[genie]

Yes, it can.

[Sid]

OK. Bad news. I got a BSOD again using these new NICs. Same as before, stop 7f first parameter 0d.
I have some kernel dumps, would you like to look at them, or would you like any other information?

Cheers

[genie]

That'll be really great!

[genie]

Ooopppsss... My apologies... I was testing NetMeeting and automatically stated port numbers for VPN being 1503 and 1720.... 1503 is not required for VPN and again, the VPN port number is 1723.