Windows 2000 Server VPN

[msilka]

My company will be implementing a VPN solution for our outside salespeople.

We have the router configured for the correct ports and have the VPN services running on out server.

I can connect by VPN from a WIN XP machine internally but cannot do it externally.

Our company's website is

http://www.mycompany.com.

The DNS and MX records are correct.
It has been stable for years.

The server we want to VPN into is on the same domain but a different server (Server2).

In the VPN setup I type in Server2.mycompany.com as the VPN Server.
Do I need to add a record in DNS to point to this VPN server? I figured any traffic to

http://www.mycompany.com

would go to our router and then get distributed via our access-lists.

Thank you

 

[Seaspray0]

The Hardware that is accepting the actual VPN connection(router or server) needs a public ip address (exception covered below). You can't have a private address for it as it is not routable over the internet. If you set up a router to accept vpn, then this is your hardware. If you set up a server to accept vpn, then the server is your hardware. You can test it by logging onto an ISP and then creating a vpn connection to the ip address of your vpn providing hardware. If you want dns resolution, you need to know who is hosting the domain dns zone for the internet... your company or your company's internet provider. Many ISP's don't allow updating of their DNS except by trusted servers (prevents joe blow from logging into the internet with a server and creating a dns subdomain off of the isp's domain).

As for that exception, you may be using Network Address Translation (NAT) on your network to translate a group of private addresses to a single/multiple public ip address. If you are doing this, you must edit the NAT settings to specify that the ports you are using for your VPN will map directly to a private address... thus making your private VPN server address look public (connect to the public address of your NAT translator) on those ports. Note that with NAT, you are limited in VPN connectivity. L2TP may not be supported at all. The router may not support VPN address translation if it is doing the NAT. 2000 Server will support NAT on a PPTP and even allow MPPE encryption on it.