the problem is clearcut. on the intranet, everyone can connect by http://spname or http://<sp IP address>. however, when i VPN in the network, i can only connect by http://<sp IP address>, and http://spname results in error. is there a simple way to fix this? what could be blocking the resolving of the address over the VPN? thanks! :)

Sounds like a DNS issue. A couple of possible causes: Does "spname" have a registered A or CNAME record in DNS? The single name "spname" suggests to me you are using the server's NetBIOS name which would not necessarily registered in DNS (or available to users who do not share the same DNS suffix as LAN computers)Do VPN users use a different DNS server than internal users? Can they look up "spname"? An easy way to test this is to initiate the VPN connection, and run nslookup. Enter the name "spname" and see if it returns the expected server IP address. Jason Warren Infrastructure Architect Habanero Consulting Group habaneroconsulting.com/blog