Local LAN Access on peer to peer connection

[jealvarez]

I am setting up a laptop with Windows ME and VPN Client 3.6.3 that needs to dial two remote sites that use PIX 520's with 6.22 . On the first site the LAN (behind the PIX) uses an NT domain. There the laptop is able to login properly to the domain and map shared drives. On the second site the LAN is peer to peer (no domain logon). On that site the tunnel is established and the laptop can access web services (http, ftp, etc.) on LAN hosts but can not map shared drives. The WINS server setting appears to be correct. Is there any additional routing or tunneling configuration to allow local LAN access to peer to peer LANs ? Thanks.

[shannong]

What happens when you try to map a drive? If the resource just can't be found, it has to be a WINS issue. Try mapping the drive by IP. If it works, you know it's a WINS problem.

-Shannon

[jealvarez]

Thanks for your response.

A "net use" reports "network path not found" both with the hostname or the IP. The hostnames are on the "hosts" file of the laptop. The tunnel is up since I can access those hosts via ping, ftp or http (which are all blocked from external connections by the PIX).

The WINS server on the vpngroup appears to be correct. What other factors could prevent WINS from working on a peer to peer connection via a VPN tunnel ? The same setup appears to work fine dialing up to another LAN that's behind a PIX but uses NT domains. Should "local LAN access" be disabled when the LAN is peer to peer (although I tried this and didn't appear to make any difference) ?

[shannong]

What version of Windows are the remote hosts?

Try telnetting to port 139 on those machines and see if you can connect.

telnet 192.168.1.1 139

[jealvarez]

The remote servers are running Windows 2000 Server.

Telnet to port 139 doesn't work even from a local machine on their network. Checking further, on their peer to peer network the client for MS Networks is bound to NetBEUI and not to TCP/IP. That is probably the problem since the laptop didn't have NetBEUI on the dialup interface. Will try the laptop with NetBEUI later today (I assume NetBEUI will also be transported on the VPN tunnel).

Thanks for your help.

[shannong · Accepted solution]

For Win2k, you'll need to telnet to port 445 and not 139.

NetBEUI will not work across a VPN tunnel. VPNs are an IP based solution. NetBEUI only works as a broadcast on the local LAN. Native dial-up can handle NetBEUI, but the VPN tunnel will not. Just make sure the all hosts involved are using TCP/IP instead of NetBEUI and it should work fine.