Windows won't use DNS settings from it's PPTP client. 1

[c1utch]

I'm remotely connecting my Windows 2000 pc to our company firewall using the Windows PPTP VPN client. I can connect fine and ping any of our company servers on our network from this Windows 2000 PC using IP addresses. But when I try to ping them via their server name I get a "Unknown host xxxx" where xxxx is the name of the server I'm trying to ping.

I know I can edit the hosts file on my PC by adding the names and IP addresses of the servers, but I don't want to do this...unless it's a last resort.

To further troubleshoot...

When I connect my PPTP VPN client, the VPN server (my company firewall) gives me an IP address and a DNS server address. The DNS server in this case is the firewall itself. If go to my firewall at work and try to ping devices on that network (which is the same network it sits on), the firewall can ping them fine via their name. But for kicks, I decided I would eliminate this DNS server from the equation.

So, on my PPTP VPN client, I changed the DNS server by clicking "Properties"->"Networking" then editing the DNS settings in TCP/IP. I changed it to the company DNS server which is a Windows 2000 server (one of the ones I'm trying to ping remotely over the VPN.)

I reconnected and still nothing. I can't ping anything via the server names. This tells me windows trys to resolve the name via my ISP DNS server, fails and then reports an error. It never attempts to look at the VPN session's DNS server.

Does anyone know why this is happening and how to fix it?

Chris

 

[seong76]

If you setup WINS, you should be able to ping the servers by their netbios name. Also, have you tried to ping your servers via their fqdn ie. server1.domainname.com?

 

[c1utch]

seong76,

Good news, I fixed it. Your post got me thinking of the fqdn for the servers on my LAN. I didn't think my problem was linked to WINS since my PPTP server is my firewall, which is a product that is based off of Linux.

Anyway, before my post I tried to ping the fqdn of my servers and I kept getting a reply from my corporate website (which is hosted by a 3rd party). That led me to my A records held by my DNS registration on the web. There is an entry for *(all others).mydomain.com that I had set to point to the IP of our website. My thinking was that if someone mistyped in our website, they would still be able to find it.

After I removed that entry and waited for these records to trickle down, I was able to ping our servers using their fqdn.

But I still wasn't happy with this since. I wanted to still be able to ping our servers via their host name without having to type the entire fqdn.

I clicked on the "Properties" button of the Windows PPTP client and selected the "Networking" tab. Then I selected "Internet Protocol TCP/IP" and clicked the "Properties" button. There I clicked on the "Advanced" button and then selected the "DNS" tab. Towards the bottom, there is an entry for "DNS suffix for this connection". I entered "mydomain.com" in the box. After saving that setting, I reconnected to my VPN server and could ping my servers using just the host name rather than using the fqdn.

Thanks for getting me straighted out and back on the right path seonq76!!!


Chris