Script to Automate Login

[CliveW]

Hi,

I'm a complete novice when its comes to VPN, and I need some advice.
We have a client that has given us VPN access into their site between 0900hrs and 1730hrs.

We are in the process of setting up SQL Replication between the 2sites and as we loose connection each night I was wondering if I can set a task to run a script at 0900hrs to reconnect / connect to the VPN in the mornings.


Thanks
Clive

 

[John Lewis]

What kind of VPN server are you connecting to?

Do you have a vendor specific VPN client, or are you using the MS dialup networking client?

If MS dialup client, was the client configured on the client machine, or was the client connection created with CMAK? If it was a CMAK connection, you would have been given an .exe file that would create the DUN connectoid for you.

 

[CliveW]

The Server at the otherside is running NT4.

We have reverted back to MS Dialup after having problems with the way they had configured their CISCO VPN software.

The client was configured on the client machine.

What is a DUN connection?

 

[John Lewis]

Sorry, DUN = dialup networking.

You didn't say what OS was running on the client side, guess I failed to ask. Happens now and then.

Assuming some recent version of Windows, rasdial should get you started in the right direction.

rasdial is a command line utility. To start a connection at the command prompt, you would simply type 'rasdial connection_name' and press enter. A good starting point would be to type 'rasdial /?' to get a list of the few options available.

Use your preferred method to make the command run at the designated time, depending of course upon the specific OS (at command, task scheduler, etc).

 

[John Lewis]

Also forgot to note, generally it is a good idea to specify the username and password with a scheduled rasdial. Some versions of Windows will try to substitute the system account credentials for those stored in the DUN entry. This would make your command line:

rasdial entry_name user password

 

[CliveW]

I asked what the setup was for the client that we are connecting into.

We don't have a VPN server as such. The way I have configured mine is that I have connected the Cisco PIX to a SteelBelt Radius server that authenticates the users according to certain criteria, the radius server then passes certain users that are time restricted like yourselves to our Windows 2K Active Directory where a group policy imposes the specific time constraint.

Does this help..

 

[CliveW]

but we don't dial-in we connect via the ipaddress they specified. Or am I missing something here?