Hi, I have recently setup a Windows SBS 2003 Standard server at my work office. I am trying to complete the project by adding VPN access for a couple of managers. I have setup the VPN and the right users can connect with no problems. However they cannot access anything by hostname. The VPN connection picks up the SBS server as the DNS & WINS servers, but you cannot ping by either servername or servername.domain.local Adding an LMHOSTS file on the external machines allows you to ping the servername, but not servername.domain.local This means that Outlook can't connect to the Exchange server! I am running out of things to try. It is not the firewall, I've tested that by disabling it completely. Also you can only access the SBS server by pinging it's VPN server IP, not it's normal IP. Remote Desktop works though, and I can access other machines on the network by IP. For information the external machines are all Win XP. Your ideas are greatly appreciated. Dan

First LMHOSTS is for Netbios (wins) resolution not DNS. Hosts file is for DNS resolution. Second your description is not clear to me. You say VPN clients can not ping by servername.domain.local. Is this: 1) After establishing VPN connection and trying to ping other servers on that network? (VPN config issue) 2) Pinging from the public Internet to the internal network? 3) Pinging ANYthing (even yahoo.com) by DNS name after establishing VPN connection? (DNS issue) Also when you say they can not ping those servers, is it name resolution (host not found) or no response? Two totally different problems. Copy the output of IPCONFIG might help too. Lastly have you configured a forward lookup zone for your internal network?