Running Oulook from VPN Client

[superco7]

I have just installed a Pix 515E at our main office and am trying to utilize the VPN connection for one of our remote offices to allow them to get email on their desktops as opposed to logging onto a terminal server. I am in the process of testing the vpn client out, but the only problem I have is getting outlook to open from the test pc. We can establish a vpn connection to the pix, but when I open up Outlook it says it cannot establish a connection and asks if I want to retry or work offline or cancel. Is there anything else I have to do on the server or client side to get outlook to work on the client pc?

We are running Exchange 5.5 on a mixed NT/2000 Domain and the client pc is running XP Professional with Office 2000. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[chicocouk]

If the vpn is up, check you can ping the exchange server by ip. If not, you can't route to it, or an access control list is blocking you. Figure out why that could be. But more likely you'll be able to.

If you can, check you can ping it by name. If you can't, (but you can ping it by ip), then you have a name resolution issue. The dns servers that resolve the exchange server to an ip are probably on the side of the vpn nearest the exchange server. Does your xp client machine know about these dns servers? If not, give it that information (easiest way to test if that's the problem is to add an entry to the system32/drivers/etc/hosts file on the client machine, alternatively add the dns server's ip to network properties on the xp machine). If you can then ping by name you'll probably find you can connect to the exchange server.

In theory the pix can pass down details of local dns servers to the vpn clients, in practice I've found this to be a bit flakey. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. In the real world it's often easier to manually create a host file with the name/ip mappings for the main servers in your office and put this on the vpn client machines.

If anyone knows why dns for vpn clients can be flakey, i'd love to know ...

CCNA, MCSE, Cisco Firewall specialist, VPN specialist, wannabe CCSP