I have a complicated setup with 4 sub offices and a head office. All the sub offices are subdomains with their own exchange server, and they are all connected via VPN firewalls to each other. I have OWA working fine for any user whose mailbox is hosted on the head office exchange server using a FE-BE setup at head office. What I am trying to see if i can get working is for the OWA-FE server to allow me to open a mailbox for a user on a remote site over the VPN-WAN? Thanks in advance for any help. Noel

What version of Exchange are you runnning? I'm assuming 2003 since you mentioned "FE-BE" but 2003 and 2007 work quite differently when it comes to OWA accessing mailbox servers due to AD site configuration versus Administrative Groups in 2003.

We are running exchange 2003 sp2. I have also tried pointing the Front End server to use specifice GC servers at each site. What i get is a 501 error not an unrecognised user error.

Hi, First please use rpc ping to check the connection between FE with BE. Also please check whether you can ping GC from FE. Ensure that front-end server can successfully connect to the GC and DNS server. You can use telnet from the front-end server to the appropriate ports on the servers in the intranet-389,3268,53,and other ports. Note: telnet [servername] port Besides, please ensure that the vpn connection can hold the bandwidth when FE forward request to BE. How Telnet Works http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/566bc823-b916-40cf-a0c0-1dedffaebeb11033.mspx?mfr=true Hope it helps. Xiu

Thanks Xiu I have never user RPC ping before so i will look it up and try it on monday along with the telnet. I can ping all the servers, but i am not sure about the bandwidth's. Both the sites i am trying to connect to have SDSL, and Surestream, but the main site is quite poor (6 bonded ADSL lines). I will try these things and get back to you. Thanks for your help. Noel

Hi, I'd like to share a article about RPC Ping for you: How to use the RPC Ping utility to troubleshoot connectivity issues with the Exchange over the Internet feature in Outlook 2007 and in Outlook 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/831051 How to Use RPCPing to Test RPC Communication http://support.microsoft.com/kb/167260 Hope it helps. Xiu

Xiu The telnets to each port seem to work. They connect at least to the server. I have put rpingc32.exe on the server and tried running it on the servers netbios name using tcp/ip. Successful RPC binding using these parameters: network address = 192.168.8.1 endpoint = \pipe\rping UUID = protocol sequence = ncacn_np Ping #1 Succeded #Calls Received at server = 2 #Calls Initiated by server = 0 #Packets Received by server = 2 #Packets Initiated by server = 2 If i try the netbios name it fails, and it fails if i use the FQDN. giving this error. 1st box up. RPC call to RPING's Server side app raised exception 0x6ba. The server is unavailable follwed by 2nd box RPC call raised exception 0x6ba. The server is unavailable I am going to try and add a manual entry in the DNS for netbios name of the server in case it is trying to address it that way.

Xiu Thanks for your help. the RPC pointed me in the right direction to what was causing the problem. The RPC wouldn't work on the netbios name or FQDN, but did on the IP address. From the doc the RPCping work by machine name so as soon as i put the IP and server name in the host file it worked. Many thanks Noel

Cool!