Can't browse clients

[The Black Angel]

Hello,

I'm a bit novice to this whole networking, so please forgive me if I have problems with obvious things.

My problem is this:

My clients successfully connect to the Server, and i can access the shared drives on the server, but I can't access the clients from the server side, but this is exactly what I need. I need to be able to acces files on the clients local disks. It sais "testing" behind client 1 and it stays this way, while client 2 simply is not browsable (and one of the routes says in conflict).

I have the WinGate Gateway & VPN server installed on a Win2000 Pro machine, with direct DSL connection to the web. This is on site 1.
Site 2&3 both have a Win2000 Pro PC with the VPN client installed. Both have direct DSL access.

I use DNS2GO and none of the machine has an other firewall than the one provided by Wingate. i exported the config file to set up the clients, so I'm fairly sure these are correct.

I'm realy desperate to get this fixed, as my boss is growing impatient. :-)

What i've thought of as a possible error source could be that both client PC#s were connected to the same local network as the gateway when they were configured (not the VPN client though, this one was installed after removing the PCs from the network). Could there be any legacy of the network that interfers with the VPN ? I have disabled the network cards, so everything should be gone.

Anybody an idea of what to do ? Please ?

Regards,

Dan

[adrien]

the key phrase may be the "one of the routes is in conflict" one..

what IP addresses are you using on the local networks at each site?

They all need to be on different logical subnets.

Adrien

[The Black Angel]

Hello Adrien,

thanks for your time.

The Clients on both remote sites are stand-alone PCs, but before I brought them there, they were all in the same network as the gateway and VPN server. At that time, their IP range was 192.168.0.X.
I disabled physically the network card though, and disabled the LAN in the network settings, but maybe the remains of the LAN are still active somewhere.

Dan

[adrien]

the machines on different nodes of the VPN all need to be on different subnets, so if both machines were numbered 192.168.0.X, then you will need to renumber one of them to say 192.168.1.X

Adrien

[The Black Angel]

Hi Adrien,

thanks for the tip, it fixed the major part of the problem. I can now access the computers in both directions, BUT there still seems to be a hick to it, as the client computer turns grey and sais "Inaccessible". However, if I try to browse it and retest the connection, i can acces the shares but the error message "The list of servers for this workgroup is currently not available".

Dan

[adrien]

OK, this is probably a routing setup thing.

In order to browse the computers on a network from say network neighbourhood or Explorer, you need to be able to connect to the master browser for a network. If you can't connect to a master browser, you will get an error stating that "the list of servers for this workgroup is currently not available" as you are seeing.

The machine acting as the master browser can change from time to time by a method known as browser elections. This means that sometimes you can browse because a machine that has won the master browser election is able to be connected to, and other times you wont, since the master browser will have changed to a machine that does not have the routes configured for you to be able to connect to it.

This indicates to me that probably on the remote office, the WinGate VPN machine there is not acting as the main gateway to the internet, and that the machines on that remote LAN, or at least some of them have either

a) no default gateway setting at all; or
b) a default gateway pointing to a machine other than the WinGate VPN gateway machine on that network.

if the WinGate VPN machine there is the default gateway to the network (i.e. you are also using WinGate with a normal WinGate license to provide an internet gateway) then simply go to the machines on the remote LAN that you need to connect to, and make sure their default gateway setting in their TCP/IP properties for their Lan Adapters is set to the IP address of the WinGate machine on that LAN.

if you are using another gateway, and you don't want to change the default gateway (that would probably be a bad idea), then you will either need to

a) manually add a route entry to the route table on the machines you need to access; or
b) install or enable a RIPv2 client on the machines you need to access. This is the easier option, since it will then configure the route table automatically depending on advertised routes from the WinGate VPN machine.

We wrote a RIPv2 client specifically for this purpose which you can find on our website http://www.qbik.com

Make sure that whatever you do, that you don't install the RIP client on the VPN gateway machine.

[The Black Angel]

Hello again, I tried a view options to get things solved myself, but it still seems to be a configuration problem.

The client machine is a win98 pc with direct DSL connection. What parameters do I have to use ? I installed it as a single VPN server. So I don't have any gateway I could indicate, or should I set a fixed IP and point to itself as gateway?

Many thanks for your help !

Dan

[adrien]

if you are trying to access the VPN from the machine running the VPN software, you shouldn't need to set up any default gateway apart from the one you use for Internet connectivity, which if you are connecting to the VPN server on the other end must be working ok already.

Are you still trying to browse the remote network and not having any luck? It is probably a routing configuration issue on machines on the server network.

Adrien

[The Black Angel]

Hi,

there is no network on the remote location, just a single PC, which I can't browse. It still says "the list of servers.... not available". I have Win98 installed now as OS on the remote locations. I both tried setting up the remote computer as VPN server, or VPN client, but problem remained the same.

Dan

[adrien]

Ah. can you open it by IP address?

Go to Run and type \\192.168.whatever the IP is.

Adrien

[The Black Angel]

Hello,

no, it returns no results found when I search for computers by IP or \\
No results whatsoever.

Dan