URGENT: Employee VPN !! 1

[NevG]

Hi

My company has a couple of employees (all of us are on windows machines) that works from the other end of the country to us in the office. Can I set up a VPN to allow her access to our network?

If so how do I start?

I understanding LAN networking so you dont need to be too basic but Im a bit lost on this.

Thanks for any help

 

[LKT]

Which platform (os) do you want to run the VPN server on or do you want a fixed vpn solution such as Cisco VPN?


Cheers, Andy.

 

[Guest_imported]

I would like to run on a Win 2000 adv server box. This is our server in work. It is on an ADSL line to the internet which is pretty reliable.

Can our guy in London get into this without us having to buy any VPN equipment or software?

 

[LKT]

Setting up the VPN server on a 2k server is dead easy to do. It is all configured through the Routing and Remote Access component.

I would put SP2 on for Windows 2k and also the high encryption pack (not 100% sure whether sp2 will have this) so you can get 128bit keys.

Use PPTP Windows Authentication rather than RADIUS and L2TP, the latter are slightly better in certain aspects but certificates etc are a pain in the arse unless you understand CA services.

Yup, your guy in London shouldnt have a problem with this as long as his client machine is compatible with the authentication and the vpn transport protocols (ie, MsChap v2 etc - authentication and PPTP for transport etc) and also the bit-key encryption rate (eg 40bit/56bit/128bit encryption).

The problem you may find with authenticating machines is that the client may send the wrong domainname to the server if the vpn domain (if you have one) is different to the clients domain (if you have one!). Windows machines can get past this easily by just specifying the Domain in the VPN Connection Client Wizard.



Some docs on setting up vpns in detail are:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/columns/profwin/pw0201.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/deploy/confeat/vpnsol.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/columns/cableguy/cg0101.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/columns/tips/15tipsfo.asp

Hope that helps, Cheers Andy.