Office VPN: The Network Strikes Back

Well, a week or so after getting my VPN up and running I’ve found myself out on the road at a very large client. Attempting to put my newly created VPN to good use has yielded some problems though.

It turns out that I didn’t set up the WINS or DNS server properly when I made the VPN. I’m not sure which. I haven’t had time to look into it yet. In any case, when I log into the VPN, DNS is not putting my computer into the network properly so that I can access the other systems.

Fortunetely, the DHCP server is also my VPN server. It has a static IP, so I can use Remote Desktop to browse into my server, read the list of IP addresses that have been handed out through DHCP, and through trial and error do everything I need to do. Although this works, it would be much simpler if I could simply access all of my computers by name instead of hunting for the IP and guessing at which machine is which.

Maybe when I come back this weekend I can try fooling around with it. I’d hate to mess with it remotely, have something either lock up, go down, or be screwed up and not be able to get in at all. In the meantime, I’ll be writing job descriptions so I can post a new job opening at Moon River Software.