Out with the server and in with wingate?

[TechDan]

I'm a new IT guy for a business that has about 50 users, I inherited a mess (nothing is marked, wires everywhere), currently we have in place a NT 4.0 server (PIII 500, 128MB, 9GB HDD)(I know ...funny!), anyway, we don't run any programs from the server (and for good reason!!!), all the server currently does is provide authentication through the server and it's running an old version of wingate (I think version 5.0.1 or something) it's purpose is only network security. Currently I'm having some difficulty with ports that seem to be closed, not sure if it's a problem with wingate for sure but like I said, I'm not running any apps from the server which points the finger either at NT or wingate, I plan at some point to take wingate out of the picture.
I have two questions,
1- Is it possible to upgrade wingate to a newer version even though it doesn't meet specs and will it still run?
2- What I would like to do is toss the server and get a desktop PC with XP Pro on it, install wingate, use it to authenticate users and provide network security, (that would save a bundle on server 2003 and license's), i'm just not sure if anyone has implemented something similar using a desktop PC and what their results were.

The main port problem is an application that tries to connect via the Internet to the companies server (outside the LAN), it's somehow being blocked and I called the companies tech support to only get it's a problem on my end. This app doesn't have anywhere to enter my proxy settings, I don't even know which port it's trying to access, the LAN IP's are 10.x.x.x, not sure if wingate is having a problem redirecting the IP request to the Internet or do I need to create a rule somewhere?

Any replies are greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Dan

[genie]

Wingate should run fine on your machine - no problem with this kind of spec - although it all depends on the actual load - NAT is probably the least expensive way in terms of performance characteristics.

As of the applications question, just look at what connections are created when users start working with their apps. As an alternative you can install WG clients on users' machines.

[TechDan]

Thank you genie for the quick response.

The servers load on the CPU before I installed antivirus was around 11%, now it's up to around 50% with wingate and antivirus running, not too shabby I think. I still haven't taken the plunge and upgraded wingate ( I know before I quoted that it was around version 5.0.1, well it's more like version 3.0.1!), now I'm just taking screen shots of all the settings and printing them off before I upgrade but I'm still a little concerned making such a huge version upgrade (screens have changed between these versions) that I won't get the settings just right (if upgrading doesn't go 100% smoothly than I'm totally screwed, the whole business might as well go home, that's how much they count on it) I really am hoping everything goes smoothly.
As far as the port problem I think I'm heading in the right direction, I installed wingate clien on the client PC but it has a problem with the server since it's so far out of date (thought I'd try it anyway).
As far as the server goes I talked the owner into upgrading the server's memory and HDD, at least it won't be so pathetic then.

I have another question if someone would be so kind to answer,
If I do an upgrade from wingate version 3.0.1 to the latest, will the setting automatically transfer to the newest version seemlessly or will I have to reconfigure most of the setting ?

[adrien]

After 2.1 we pretty much standardised on our registry usage.

so 3.x to 5.x should migrate all your settings. However, if you move to 6.0, you would need to verify service bindings. This is a fairly simple matter however.

Other things like services, user accounts, policies, dialup settings, cache settings etc are still all the same.