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ISA server VPNs

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by hannahlovesbananas

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Hi,
I have a question about VPNs.....My company and an outside company need a VPN set up because our people that use their (the outside company's) claims software need to be able to print to our printers in our office. The software that we use of theirs accesses a database at the outside company, so when printers need to be specified, apparently they need to be specified at the origin of the information that is being accessed. All of that said.....i'll get to my question.....

For our Firewall we use an ISA server......and ive read and read and read on ISA server VPNs, but what i gather is that both endpoints of the VPN need to both be ISA servers.....is this true? If so, does anyone have tips on setting up a basic VPN? Thanks for all your help.....

11 replies

by areets

I need more info. Yes, ISA servers at both ends. reason: authentication and encryption.

by hannahlovesbananas

Woo hoo!! I finally got a reply....What i really needed to know was the fact of whether or not ISA servers were needed at both ends......that'll mean that we'll have to invest in some new equipment to set this VPN up.....something my company might not be too happy about, but otherwise.....i guess what else i need to ask, is how to go about this and what we'll need so i can go about getting a VPN set up.....thank you soooooo much :)

by areets

I can help, just ask kindly!
Provide me with some understanding of the your company's and external client's connections to external tcp/ip cloud. OS types, domain names not important but whether NT 4 domain or AD, be careful that you do not share internal secrets. Give clear explanations but no precise networking details. e-mail: thesourceportal@hotmail.com

Regards.

by chewitt

The answer to your Question is no. We have just setup a VPN to our central office. You only need an ISA server in your company. What you have to do is allow yor remote user dial-in permissions. Once you make the first connection Join that computer to the domain. Next time you log on check the box on the logon screen use dialup networking to connect.

Chris.

by areets

Maybe I expected the configuration in search best fit one that requires network point-to-point security. If remote software requires to access its local DB but print to software users local network printers, then single client to server configuration is insufficient. From what I also understood, company and external client which means that their network infrastructure are not identical domains.

Nevertheless, ensure a clear network design is done and an initial traffic analysis for network load.

Let me know if you need more consultation.

Regards.

by hannahlovesbananas

The only traffic on the VPN would be print requests.....and the number of people needing to print is under 5....does that help?

by lordinfidel

Is it a network to network vpn?

Or are "your local" users dialing up into their network. Which then you don't need to do anything but let the appropiate protocols (IKE, GRE, PPTP, what have you) thru your firewall.

Or are remote users dialinginto your network?

For network to network-
The answer to the original question is that no, you do not need ISA server on the other side.
But The remote side must be interopable with ISA.
Which I believe uses L2TP and PPTP. But I do not know if you can add symetric keys to it.

I've personally never have used ISA for vpn access. But I found a doc http://tinyurl.com/8w0d that describes the set up.

But the first thing in any vpn design is figuring out what kind of set up is needed.

by areets

How clients using the software? Do you know the print quantity per print? How are the two networks connected?

Regards.

by hannahlovesbananas

Its a unix based system where currently our employees log in with a username and password......in order to connect to the external site, we permit traffic on such and such a port on our firewall and they permit incoming and outgoing from such and such a port on their firewall.......what its used for is to view benefit claims for multiple companies.....and print benefit checks for certain claims......the claims and information are stored remotely on a server at their site and when we log in withour user name and password, we are able to access and update the info on that server......but we need the VPN to be able to print in our office, because how its set up is, it's set up to print to onsite printers, and we obviously arent onsite being they're in arizona and we're in minnesota......and the main issue with print quantity so im told is it depends on how many checks go out weekly....which depends on how many claims are paid and processed......meaning one day it can be tons where the next day, it can be hardly any.....but personally i don't see traffic being that huge of an issue.....because one out of the 4 people that use the software, will be printing these checks.....others will just be printing screens.....i hope this makes sense.... hit me up with more questions.....

by hannahlovesbananas

It's a network to network VPN i believe.....we're not dialing into their network....we just need to set up a secure connection between the two of us in order to print from software we use that's housed on their end.

Being that its housed on their end, they need to specify our in-office printer's IP address in their configuration. Once the tunnel is set up, we'll be able to safely communicate and send print requests and have them print to our in-office printer.

I do know just as of late that they in fact are interoperable with ISA, so i guess what help i need is to know what to set up for an encryption domain and how to manage keys and authentication....thanks for the link, ill check it out......

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