VPN Lan Games

[phantomID]

Basically my situation is the following, I want to use a VPN connection to create a "LAN" for games over a WAN. The only problem is the games being able to connect to each other. Generally, they can SEE the hosted game and all correct information about it, but when attempting to connect - it times out.

My set up is basically the "main network" of two PCs one Win2K3 Server Enterprise running the PDC, DNS, DHCP, WINS, and the RRAS server, and the other XP Pro, (the one I want to host the games on, but NOT RRAS)

There are NO issues what so ever in ANY VPN windows environment, all VPN clients on the Domain are authenticated assigned IP and registered in WINS and DNS no problem. File shares, Group Policy updates, all work perfectly, (including NetBios names)

So, I know the problem lies in RRAS, I am running Windows Routing and Remote Access Server. I was reading on a few pages that security most likely has something to do with it, being as VPN connections often drop certain packets.

Also - an important note - in order to host the game I MUST CHANGE the IP to the RAS Internal IP, (not LAN), for the clients to SEE and CONNECT. What I want is true functionility, because SOME games do NOT allow you to change its "percieved IP", and also so that I DON'T have to HOST the games ON the SERVER.

Temporaily due to frustration - I've been using the WinXP Pro machine to handle the incoming PPTP Tunnels, but this I greatly dislike as the users are not authenticated using Active Directory, as this causes some problems in my "WAN DOMAIN". And still the above issue remains, some games DO NOT ALLOW you to CHOOSE your HOST IP.

Network DCHP IP Range 192.168.2.10 - 192.168.2.100
Win2k Server - 192.168.2.11, XP Machine 192.168.2.10
NetGear Router - FVS318 192.168.2.1 (Default Gateway to ISP)
"Internal" RAS IP - 192.168.2.20 Client's: 192.168.2.21 - 192.168.2.30
(If that helps, cause part of me feels it is also a routing issue somewhere.)

Server has no direct connection to WAN, only has on NIC connected to LAN.

So, to all you networking guys out there, basically:
WHY does RAS use a different IP? Why would I have to HOST on the RAS IP? Is it a security issue? - If so how do you bypass?


If anyone can shed any light on the situation I will be able to sleep better at night, because most of the time we are about to play - the Network or the "GettoWork" as some of my friends i.e. clients call it, decides to be difficult and I have to spend too much time trying to fix it.

 

[Dmasch]

I would use VPN routers as your end points and get rid of the RRAs

 

[phantomID]

Thanks - That's a good solution but it's more costly. I was reading more about this and appearently it has to do with VPN's dropping most if not all of the network broadcast traffic. What I really need is the best of all worlds, authenticated file sharing with some encryption in the sense of say passwords but mainly, that the VPN doesn't drop the packets cause its annoying to me. I have see programs like GIT but I haven't yet been successful, and this requires 3rd party software. So I really have no idea, if anyone comes up with anything to fix this one aspect that would be great.