See internal domain from My Network Places

[dsalvemini]

I have just installed the Cisco Concentrator 3005 and are using the

cisco vpn client to connect to out internal network.I can see the

network and authenticate

with no problem. I can also ping the servers by name and IP address,

but when I go to network neighborhood it cannot see the domain and

listed computers. I am using windows 2000 and windows 98 and both give

me the same problems. I can only see the domain if I rename the

workgroup to the exect name in the internal network. Is this the way I

have to do it on all the external computer. I hope not. I am going

something wrong? How can I force network neighborhood to see out

internal domain without renaming the workgroup? LMHOST file?

We are using wins on a NT 4.0 Domain.

Please help i'm going out of my mind

Thankyou.

Domenic

[cbettam]

There are several similar unanswered threads in the services section of the VPN forum.

What is important to understand is how browsing works. As browsing is broadcast based it cannot cross routers/subnets without help. This is where WINS comes into play. Each subnet has its own browse master which reports to the WINS server. If a client becomes the browse master in its own subnet it needs to know who to share the information with. In this case, configure the client to point at your WINS server.

What may have an affect on the solution is how the concentrator is configured for address assignment (if DHCP, there shouldn't be a problem).

[dsalvemini]

Hi-

Thanks,

I am able to ping the server by ip address and name and also if I do a ipconfig /all after I connect to the concentrator I do see it showing the Wins server address. I would not care about browing "My Network Places" if I know how to map the drives locally. I have tried a bat file but I always need to enter a password even though i connected to the internal network already..

BTY: We are using DHCP on the concentrator and its working fine.

Any insight will help.

Thankyou

Domenic

[wolfrikk]

Are they logging into their home computers with their domain user accounts. Microsoft works funny with VPN. They login that is used with the VPN client is just for authorizing VPN access. After access is granted, the systems passes the local token when accessing resources. If the user is not using their domain accounts, the first time they try to access any domain resources, like mapping a network drive, they will have to authentication with the domain. They way around this is to have them log into their local computers with their domian username and password, even though their computers are not a member of the domain.

[dsalvemini]

Thanks,

Is their any way to have the script run on the server side or does the client

have to run the script locally.. Also Is it just a .bat file that they need to run or is there a fancy interface type of utilty that they can run to map the drives..

Thansk,

Domenic

[wolfrikk]

The script would have to be run locally. There is no way to have a login script run just when they access resources for the first time. With windows 2000 clients, you can map the drive and it will stay mapped whether it is connected or not. It will have a red X on it until they connect to the drive after the VPN connection is made. With Windows 9x clients, they will have to run the batch file after the VPN Connection is made. Some VPN clients will run a program after the connection is made. I don't remember if the Cisco Client will do this or not.

[dsalvemini]

Thankyou very nuch for the info..

So I assume that if I can map the drives then "My Network Places" is useless.

Also Cisco client will run the batch before the login which stinks, Do you by any chance know any over vpn client that will run a batch after the login and work with the concetrator.

Thanks,

Domeinc

[wolfrikk]

I will have to check into the VPN Clients. I don't know of one off the top of my head. By default, My Network Places is going to start in their workgroup. They would have to browse to the domain after the VPN connection is established. The domain may not show up in My Network Places right away, it may take a few minutes for the browser services to sync. What I have done in the past is create a batch file that will start the VPN client, then map the Network the network drives. That way the users just run the one batch file and it will do both. You may have to put a pause statement in before the drive mapping to allow the connection to complete. eg:

--start of batch file--

c:

cd\program files\client directory\

filename.exe

pause

net use x: \\computername\share

--end of batch file--

I the pause statement will depend on how the batch file reacts to the client program. Sometimes it will not process the next line until the program finishes running and sometimes it will process the next line after the program starts.

I hope this helps.

[cbettam]

The VPN Clients must point to your WINS server in their network config (TCP/IP, Properties, Advanced,WINS, Add WINS server) if the domain is different otherwise browsing won't work.