Hiya. I recently started working for a company that has two labs in two different building on the same campus. They all share the same OC3 backbone but are in different building on different subnets. One building has the file server that both building need to access. I was going to set up a VPN between the two. When I went to make the server (Dell Poweredge 2500SC running Win2kServer) also function as a VPN server, everything went fine. I reserved a block of IP's for exclusive VPN access and authorized the proper people VPN access. When I went home later that night, I could log in to the server remotely, it would authenticate my user name and password, but I had no access to any services on the server, files, printers, nothing. What would be my best option? Am I missing something? I have plenty of experience with MCSE type of network admin'ing, but this VPN schtuff is all new to me and I'm having to learn it on a part time basis. Do I need a software solution to add to all of this to allow the server to connect to files and services through the VPN server, or do I ahve to have a completly different machine to act as the VPN server and create a DMZ between the internet and the LAN. I've looked all over the net and found only information on how to set up a VPN client. Any help or guidence as to where to find the information I need would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! btw, from the OC3, we get a multiplexed T1 line through a Cisco 2600 series router tied to a Catalyst 1900 switch. From there it webs out to the entire office.

did you specify which folders are to be shared on the server? may be why you cant see any of them. and no you should not need any 3rd party software to see the folders or use the VPN from your computer. i would double check the shared folders and the user rights again. i had this same problem, could log on to VPN but didnt see anything. what i had to do was map that network drive from my computer before i could see anything... good luck, hope this helped...

All a VPN is supposed to do depending on design and setup is to give you an IP address on your lan and allow/restrict access to other IP addresses via a secure tunnel. The resource you are trying access is restricted by the domain authentication. You may not see resources if you don't have WINS, DNS, etc. configured but you can test connectivity by pinging the address. As the previous response states, if you don't have shared resources and rights there isn't a whole lot to do.

Well, I do have resources chared to everyone that needed them (ie shared folders to their respective accounts and such). However, I do not have WINS configured. I guess for the WINS server, I would just use the server's name or IP?

I have had this similar problem with my VPN before. I could connect and all the shares were listed. I could ping all over the network, just could not resolve. It turned out that it was just that the name of my remote system was already present on the network. Seems like a simple thing but sometimes the simple things are the ones that slow us down.