WinXP Pro: Error 800

[curtissg]

I realize I am probably out of my league in this forum, but I have a quick question that I have not been able to find any pertinent info on:

I am running Windows XP Professional on my computer at work. Our computers are connected to the Internet through a DSL connection (with a hub). I followed a tutorial I found on CNET telling me how to set up an XP Pro computer as a VPN server. I think I have it working correctly. However, when I disconnected one of the other computers in our office from our network, and connected to AOL using a dialer, I could not access our VPN using the VPN dialer. It gave me error 800. Unfortunately, most of the help articles in Windows XP say that they were written for Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0. None of them appear to have actually been written for Windows XP Pro.

Am I missing a simple step somewhere? Am I having trouble because of a firewall on our DSL connection? Am I having trouble because of AOL? Please direct me to some resources where I can get specific info about using Windows XP Pro as a VPN server, and where I can find info about logging in (and what those errors mean).

 

[John Lewis]

AOL is the problem. AOL blocks the TCP/IP ports required for the VPN connection to work.

 

[GlenJohnson]

AOL has always been a problem. They also don't allow you to set up e-mail retreival using outlook if I remember correctly as they don't support pop-3. (MS doesn't either, just to be fair.) I once sat on the phone for 3 hours for a client with the help desk at AOL. The tech person finally asked me where I was calling from. When I told them, they said "That's the problem. We have 5 lines coming into that town and only 1 is working." Just my AOL gripe. Good luck.

Glen A. Johnson
Johnson Computer Consulting
MCP W2K
glen@johnsoncomputers.us

http://www.johnsoncomputers.us

Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884

"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn return to the same box."

 

[curtissg]

Thanks for the responses. Now, I am trying to access my network from home, using my cable Internet, and I am getting error 678. I will try reading the earlier post addressing the same problem, but, again, I am using Win XP Pro as my server instead of Win 2K, so I am not sure I will be able to use that info. If anyone has any suggestions about Error 678, I would appreciate it. Thank you very much.

 

[John Lewis]

Generally speaking, most things that you see related to VPN issues that mention Win NT or Win 2K will apply to XP. The interface that you use to make corrections might be a little different, but the internal workings have changed little. Especially true when dealing with error numbers and their meaning. Some of those go back at least as far as Win 3.11, maybe farther.

678 means the VPN server did not answer. Not entirely accurate, as it is possible that the server did answer, but the response did not make it all the way back to the client. Could be a routing issue or a firewall issue.

First, ping the VPN server from the client. The specific error message (if any) can be important. If you have a firewall on either side, port 1723 needs to be open, as does protocol 47 (not port 47). Protocol 47 is also known as GRE and is sometimes referred to as pptp passthrough.

If your server is behind a NAT device, port 1723 will need to be forwarded to it.

Another possibility is that your ISP on one side or the other is blocking GRE at some point. Some will require you to upgrade your home account to business service to allow you to use a VPN.

 

[curtissg]

Ok. I have heard that my main problem is the fact that I am using a SOHOWare router. I am going to ask my boss to buy a second LinkSys router instead. Here is my current configuration. Please let me know if you notice any other glaring problems with our current configuration. The only ISP's we will be using with this configuration are Verizon DSL, Adelphia PowerLink, and Comcast Cable Internet. Here is how we have it set up:

Two DSL lines come into the back wall of our office. One of them goes into a box on the wall that says "Westell" and "WireSpeed" on it. The other DSL line goes into a "SOHOWare 8 Port 10/100 Autosensing Switch". Three ethernet cables then run out of the SOHOWare switch and go through the walls where they are hooked into our computers. There is an ethernet cable running out of our "Westell" box and into a Linksys "Etherfast Cable/DSL Router", model number: "BEFSR81". Seven ethernet cables run out of that router and into the wall, where they connect to the rest of our computers.

Our computers are running various versions of Windows, and they all get their Internet directly from those routers (we do not have an actual server, we just networked all of our computers together through the DSL). We have one computer that we store all of our files on, but it is not an actual "server" (in other words, all of the computers are connected to the router, they are not all connected into one computer).

At home, I have cable Internet from Adelphia. I am running Windows 98SE. I have my client connection set up to connect to the IP address of our main computer. I have heard that I need to have it set to connect to our router, and then have it redirected to our main computer. How would I do this? I have a list of all of the IP addresses being used by our computers. I have a list of all of our available IP addresses. I have our DNS entries. I have our Gateway address, and I have our Subnet Mask. If you need more information, please let me know.


Again, please let me know if you see any glaring problems with this set up, besides the SOHOWare router (which I will hopefully replace with a VPN-compatible router). I do not want to ask my boss to spend the money on a new router if the system still won't work properly. Thank you very much for all of your help. I appreciate it very much.

 

[curtissg]

I have another question as well. Now that I have been doing a great deal more research, I have noticed a lot of talk about "static IP's" when using VPN. When I was looking into the details about our Internet Service Providers, I noticed that the ISP's that our client machines will be using do not have static IP addresses. Is this a problem, or is it just the server that needs to have a static IP?