Access Exchange (behind firewall) remotely from outlook 97

[davidlfliang]

May someone help me on this issue:

I have Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 and NT 4.0 with service pack 6 installed on my server. The local LAN is connected to ADSL connection via Dlink DSL300 Modem and Firewall Router DFL500.

What I need to achieve is to access the emails of Exchange server trough Internet at home via Modem connection.


I have followed Microsoft Knowledge Base and have done the following settings:
(1) Made a static port for Exchange Directory Service by usng regedt32.exe, the port is 1225

(2) Made a static port for Exchange Information Store, the port number is 1226

(3) Configured the port 1225,1226 and port 135(Used for RPC) on firewall to pass thru to exchange server

Now, over internet, during the setup of Outlook Profile on client machine. I can put the firewall IP address, my email outlook email account and verify the name without any problems. I think this means the above ports work properly.

However, When I put in my user name, password and domain name to log into the exchange server, the outlook just hangs without doing anything, no connection traffic either.

Do I need to open some other ports for exchange server or NT server to make it work?

I was able to access eamils from this exchange server before from home over internet, however, that time, we didn't use Firewall at all. So, there are no basic problems in this matter, such as profile setup and account setup, etc.


Also, The firewall DFL500 has VPN in it, can I use VPN to achieve what I need? If yes, how can I set it up on my NT server?


Thanks in advance

David Liang

 

[davidlfliang]

I found the solution by myself. Just post it here in case someone else has the same problem.


Create the hosts file on the client machine, point the server name to static IP address of the server.

For example,

200.2.2.12 Gateway

then, Outlook can access exchange server as normal.

Possible Reason:

During the profile setup, Outlook will resovle server name(e.g. Gateway) to create connection to server rather than Ip address, however, during the connection to exchange server, Outlook can not resovle the name back to IP address.