Created VPN between two Win7 machines, can't access shares or ping
I have a desktop that I mainly use for file storage. I want to be able to access the shared folders I have created on that machine from hotels and other places when I'm on the road, and also have my brother be able to access them from his home. I created an incoming connection on that machine, and finally figured out the firewall settings so that my brother could connect to test. However, all he can do is connect. He is unable to map any of the shared folders, by name or IP address. So thinking it was because our routers probably were on the same range, I went ahead and changed my router to use 192.168.123.1 for its gateway address, and assign addresses from 192.168.123.100. His router is set to the default, 192.168.1.1 and assigns from 192.168.1.40. So his local area connection address is 192.168.1.46, and the address he receives from the VPN connection is 192.168.123.103. Again, connects but can see or ping nothing on my side, not the gateway, not the desktop machine, not my NAS. I went so far as to disable my Windows firewall and put the desktop PC in the DMZ on my router, and still nothing. He can ping his home local gateway still. I have it set to use the remote gateway in the VPN settings. So at this point, I'm 99% sure its not firewall related, and I'm confident with the way I set up the VPN, but just out of ideas. This obviously isn't work important, but I'd like to get it to work.
March 14th, 2010 12:28am

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March 14th, 2010 3:58am

Problems with VPN file sharing is rarely a firewall problem. The VPN connection is a point to point connection between the "server" and the "client". Once the connection is up, all traffic between these is encrypted and encapsulated. All the firewall (or any sniffer on the public network) sees is the header of the encryption "wrapper". It cannot see the actual data which is the encrypted payload of that packet so it has no idea what sort of traffic it is. How are you trying to access shares? A VPN does not support braodcasts so computer browsing doesn't work. Your best bet is to use the "net use .." command to map a share to a drive letter. This allows you to specify valid credentials in the net use command.Bill
March 14th, 2010 5:30am

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