Assumed Users & Bandwidth Question...

[mcit]

I have two questions.

I am trying to use Wingate 5.2.3 to share ADSL internet between 9 users.

Of these 9, 4 of them are still running Windows 98 and the other 5 are Windows XP.

I need to set the wingate server to allow some connections and not others, ideally without the user even knowing.

I have set it up so that the server is running to accept assumed users only, I have set the assuming computer names and created usernames for the assumed computers. The problem is that I am finding that it seems to block access to all of the Windows 98 machines, the XP machines work ok though.

I have tried all sorts of methods to acheive this same result and I cannot get it right.

When I swtiched it over to authenticated users only and entered the usernames and passwords before browsing, it seemed to work fine, but that configuration does not suit the needs of this client.

I used this configuration in another ofice of mine with 8 machines and it works fine, I cannot understand why. Any help would be great.

I realise that the wingate internet client may fulfill the purpose that I am after, however I would rather not have to install that if I can get around it. I prfer to have all configuration on the server so that when it comes to reformatting machines, there is minimal configuration.

I have been using wingate since version 2.1 and I cannot understand this problem.

And secondly, I am curious as to whether wingate is able to aggregate bandwidth of 2 simultaneous ADSL connections.

If I can get the server to connect to both connections, then what will wingate do with that? It does not have to be split half / half, ideally, if the first connection was used as a primary, and the second was only used when traffic was heavy, that would be perfect.

I notice there is a setting in the services to "rotate connections" for outgoing traffic, how does this work, and would it be better to use that for my purpose?

Can this be done? Wingate 5.2.3 is currently running.

[Pascal]

I have set it up so that the server is running to accept assumed users only, I have set the assuming computer names and created usernames for the assumed computers. The problem is that I am finding that it seems to block access to all of the Windows 98 machines, the XP machines work ok though.

Is there any difference in configuration between the machines? Only DHCP clients can use name-based assumptions; so be sure that the 98 clients have requested their config from WinGate.

One alternative to using user assumptions is authentication. You can make that fairly transparent for the users if you follow a few simple guidelines. For examples, NTLM authentication over an HTTP link will automatically log the currently logged in user in. So, your login to your OS becomes your login into WinGate. Ditto, using mail authentication methods - your security level can be raised and you will be associated with the appropriate user name. Etc. Of course, this only covers the cases where the underlying protocol has some form of authentication - so it's more suited to groups that are running HTTP, SMTP+POP3, etc. type of scenarios rather than a swathe of custom software with internal protocols.

Edit: That should be qualified. It is only available for the POP3 Server and SMTP Server, not the proxies. The ideal scenario is still to get the assumptions to work perfectly.

If I can get the server to connect to both connections, then

http://forums.qbik.com/viewtopic.php?p= ... ght=#12719

Gives you some idea how to do it 5.2.3. 6.0.3 is significantly better for this type of scenario, though, and you can use it with a version 3, 4 or 5 license key.

[mcit]

Pascal

Thankyou for your reply.

I will have another look at the client config, I think they are all configured for DHCP, but I will double check. I will let you know.

As for the bandwidth sharing, if I were to use the option in the WWW and SOCKS proxy services outgoing connections tab "Rotate connections out on all the following interfaces" would that suffice to spread the load a little. It is not a very high usage site, it is simply the fact that there are too many users for the first ADSL connection, and the second connection is a donation to this NPO organisation. [Thus the reason for using both rather than simply upgrading the first connection.]

The other side of this is, once a client is routed through one of the connections by the WG server, will the client always retain that path or will it be assigned a path again the next time it attemps a connection to the internet? What sort of 'memory' does the server or the client retain with regard to these routes?

Finally, if I were to use this option, what would happen if one of the ADSL connections was to go offline for some reason? Would I be correct in assuming that if a client connection was directed across the ADSL that was offline, when the client attempted the second time to connect, would it be directed to the other connection [This is sort of what I am asking above], and does the WG server know and adjust if one connection has all the users currently on it [can this happen]?

Thanks.