Lets say I have two servers, “Bill” and “Bob.” Bill has a public IP address (216.228.1.1) and a private IP address (10.0.10.1). This machine is a domain controller, a proxy server (w/MS Proxy Server 2.0, soon to be upgraded to ISA Server) and is an Exchange 2000 Server. DNS and WINS are also set up, along with RRAS. It is also a file and print server.
Bob, about a mile away as the crow flies, is set up similar to Bill. It has a public IP address (216.228.2.1) and a private address (10.0.20.1). It is a file and print server. Currently it has no proxy server but will soon run ISA Server. DNS and WINS are set up, along with RRAS.
Questions: 1. On boot RRAS runs on Bob and it establishes what is supposed to be a persistent VPN connection to Bill, but the connection drops. Sometimes the connection stays up for days, sometimes it disconnects 8 – 10 times in a day, or even a morning. Why does this supposedly persisent connection drop? I would like a permanent connection.
2. Selected users “downstream” from each server would like to browse folders on the other server and open files. How can I extend this same view of other servers down to selected workstations? We tried using the route command like so: route add 10.0.20.1 255.255.255.255 10.0.10.2, where:
10.0.20.1 is Bob’s private address
255.255.255.255 is the subnet mask
10.0.10.2 is the IP address of the VPN connection from Bill to Bob, assigned from the DNS address pool.
Because the VPN connection drops intermittantly, a new address is assigned to any newly established VPN connection. In short this means that my “route” is not static, its address changes. This renders the “route add” command useless. Is there another way to solve this problem?
Thanks,
Mark Andrews, Info. Scvs. Mgr.
Interim, Inc., Monterey, CA
mandrews@interiminc.org