VPN connection OK, Mapped drives NOT. (W2K)

[LuMBoY]

I have VPN clients connecting through a Fortigate 500 firewall. Users have the same username/password configured on the firewall as they use to login to the domain. They are able to establish the VPN just fine, but are unable to map any drives with ease (batchfile or manually). The users are asked to enter their username and password for each mapped drive which they use. I would like this process to be seemless for the users. Clients and servers are all Win2K with latest updates/patches. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

-LuM

 

[ixleplix]

In my experience, the only way you will be able to have the mapping of the drive(s) become seamless is if the remote machines are configured to appear to be a part of the local domain and the user account that they are using to login to the remote PC is the same as one recognized in the local domain.

Example: If Joe User has a logon of juser with a password of password and the domain is called giraffe.domain.local; then the users remote machine needs to be a part of the giraffe workgroup (not domain since it presents login issues when the VPN isn’t active) and there needs to be a user account for juser with the password of password on the local machine. Then juser logs in with the password and opens the VPN connection. Once that is done you will be able to map a drive without having to provide extra authentication.

Be forewarned, the data transfer rate will be slow. Not only are you going through the Internet, but there is the encryption working as well.