Routing over VPN between ISA550W and RV215W

[johnnydgeorge]

Hello everyone I am having an issue with the VPN between my two office

I have an ISA550W at the main office (chcnorth)

I have an RV215W at the remote office (chcsouth)

the VPN is up and running, I can login to the remote (chcsouth-RV215W) from the main office

and vice versa however when the client computers on the remote end try to connect to the

main office to access out database they can not.

the trouble started about a week ago I got a call from the remote office that they could not connect to our database

on the main office, I tried to login remotely to see what was going on, it turns out that the router had completely set back

to factory including the firmware

I reinstalled the latest firmware for the RV215W setup all the connections as they were, I was able to

get the VPN to connect, I can ping the interface of the RV215W from my main office and I can ping the ISA550W

from the remote office, however my remote clients still can not access my server in the main office

I realized after I set everything up, that I had a backup from my original setup and in thinking that I had

just missed something I restored to factory upgraded firmware to current and the restored that backup of the

RV215W that I had. still no dice

So I am now at a loss, there have been no other changes to the network on either end, I have been over this som many times my eyes

are blurry,

any ideas, solutions workarounds would be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance

John G

[mpyhala]

John,

I have never heard of a router resetting completely on it's own. It is not possible for the firmware to revert to an older version. There is only one firmware version stored on the router. Did you check the serial number? Is it possible that someone swapped the router with another one?

Have you tried recreating the tunnel on the ISA? Since you are using a backup config on the RV215W that was working before I suspect that there is an issue at the ISA side at this point. Do you have a config backup for the ISA that you can restore?

- Marty

[johnnydgeorge]

mphyla

First thanks for the response, I really appreciate it.in regards to the RV215W resetting I had another RV215W previously that failed, before it failed it started

resetting to factory defaults,including going back to an older firmware. I am absolutely sure that this is the same RV215W that I put in place

It is located in a small office where there are only 2 employees I am quite confident they didn't mess with anything on that end (maybe foolishly so.) I'm not even sure they would know where to begin.

As far as the ISA550W is concerned yes I did restore it with all the settings that were functional prior to these failures I am very particular about creating a backup anytime I change anything on the ISA550W in particular.

I am in agreement completely that something seems awry on the ISA side at this point, I feel as though I have just run out of places to check (myself I mean) at any rate I am sure we will get to the bottom of it particularly with the help of the group here at cisco.

if all else fails maybe I'll upgrade at the main office and move the ISA to the remote office as the RV215 wasn't my first choice it was a budget decision, and after all upgrades are always nice.

[mpyhala]

John,

Can the remote clients access or ping any device other than the server at the main office?

Can you ping or access something other than the router at the remote office from the main office?

I wonder if the firewall on the server is maybe blocking access from any subnet other than it's own.

- Marty

[johnnydgeorge]

Marty,

Thanks again so very much for your time.

I am able to ping the following only,

from the main office (chcnorth) I can ping the RV215W at the remote office (chcsouth) and nothing else

from the remote office (chcsouth) I can ping the ISA550W and the sqlserver that I need the clients to connect to

however I am still unable to connect to the sqlsvr as the connectoid only uses the DNS type name (sorry if I am using the wrong terminology) in other words, we have to connect using \\sqlsvr it all happens behind the scenes for the end users

my first thought was hey let me pull that up by it's IP address but the connectoid won't let me do that

additionally if I were to try and access the shared directory on the server something along the lines of

\\sqlsvr\3rdParty\installers it, I can' connect either.

That is where I am most confused I can see it, I can ping it but I can't connect to the share and or the sqlsvr using the connectoid..

[mpyhala · Accepted solution]

John,

It sound like your issue is more DNS related, like you could access the server by IP address if the "connectoid" would allow you to configure it that way. This is pretty common, you can't resolve names through the tunnel because netbios broadcasts will not pass. The RV215W doesn't have split DNS in the tunnel settings, so that is not an option either.

If the "connectoid" is a PC, you can work around this by editing the LMHOSTS file. Please see the following instruction:

http://www.jakeludington.com/windows_7/20100924_how_to_edit_windows_7_lmhosts_file.html

In your case it might look more like:

192.168.1.200          sqlsvr

Now if you ping or try to access sqlsvr from the computer, it will automatically know that it should go to 192.168.1.200 without having to look up the IP address.

Please reply if you have questions.

- Marty

[johnnydgeorge]

Marty,

Thanks so much I appreciate all your time and effort, I thought this might have something to do with the DNS arena just wasn't sure where to go with things next, I will give this a shot and go from there ,

I really do need to do more sutdying on my exams it would help me alot in times like these

particularly on the networking side of things

Respectfully

John G