Intermittent remote login success

[taubate]

We have a Compaq ProLiant ML370 G3 with a built-in NC7781 Gigabit NIC running win2k server sp3 and Metaframe XP. This server is the box that users logging in from home will hit.

Out of the blue since saturday, trying to log on from home became a hit-or-miss affair, mostly miss. I had 2 techs from Qwest come out and look at our DSL line, since the line is our only pipeline to and from the outside world. And as far as they can tell, no packets are lost and they were able to get their tier 3 people to login thru ICA.

However, a short while after the techs left, at-home users began complaining about failure to log in. pcAnyhwere logins are successful 100% of the time.

And I had different people try to log in, with some getting in and some not. Prior to last Friday, everything was fine. Can anyone shed some light? Thanks!

 

[Antoniof]

First of all do you have a firewall? and if so, do you have the correct natting addresses and ports open? Or do you use VPN?
If not how are the users connecting?
I have noticed that citrix is very temperamental as far as comunications are consurned.
Also if the remote users are connecting via telephone lines then bandwith speed on their end might also be an issue.


I am not an expert, i am just experienced.

 

[taubate]

Firewall is set up correctly and has been for months. VPNs not used. Users connect via ICA connections pointing to a static IP. All remote users have broadband.

 

[DDILL]

You should really look at secure gateway. Leaving your Citrix server exposed to the internet is not a good idea.
Anyway, can you setup a sniffer on the client and on the server to see if you are loosing packets? When you say it is hit or miss can you clarify further? When a home-user conencts successfully does he have trouble staying connected or is it just connecting.

 

[Antoniof]

Ok. What type of firewall do you have?

A while back I also had some issues with conectivity to citrix with compaq nics.
What I did was Install 3com nics and update to the latest driver and the issue went away. Don't know if that might be your case.
You may also want to look at your terminal server licensing service.
Yesterday I had a problem with users connecting to one of the Citrix servers and I found that the Terminal services licensing service was acting up, so I made sure I had enough licenses for all users, being so, I stopped the terminal server licensing service renamed the LServer folder on WINNT\System32 to Lserverold, and created a new Lserver directory restarted the service uninstalled the terminal services licensing and reinstalled, stopped the service once again renamed the directory LServerold back to Lserver and restarted the service. The issue was resolved and the users were logging in with no problem.
Hope this helps.

 

[taubate]

I switched to another server to act as our work-from-home server and it worked fine. I suspect it's hardware related. Somehow it could be the built-in gigabit NIC. The server that I switched to used to be the work-at-home server but needed to be taken down for some changes.

Thanks for your ideas!