Short question: How does one enable the resolution of DNS and NetBIOS
names on a remote network from a client over a PPTP VPN?
Backstory:
I have a PPTP VPN facilitated by a Windows Server 2003 machine with
RRAS. VPN traffic is forwarded through a firewall to the RRAS machine.
NetBIOS and DNS names other than the server's are not being resolved
even though they once were. In other words, the command 'net view
[RRAS server name]' will respond, however 'net view [any other
computer name on the VPN's network]' will not respond. I get the error
message "System error 53 has occurred. The network path was not
found." Virtually the same thing happens with DNS. 'ping [RRAS
server]' resolves nicely, but pinging anything else gets "Ping request
could not find host accounting. Please check the name and try again."
As I said, there was a time in the recent past that DNS and NetBIOS
resolved over the VPN connection. I’m not aware of any changes that
have been made that would affect this. I've tried setting the remote
gateway as the default gateway and even setting the DNS server on the
VPN's network as my primary DNS server and still can't get any DNS
names to resolve. However, using nslookup with the remote location's
DNS server will get each name in question to resolve. Hmmmm.
Oddly enough, I have an entirely different PPTP VPN connection (this
time the VPN facilitator is an ISA 2004 server) that behaves the way
that I want it to. DNS and NetBIOS names resolve with or without the
remote gateway being my default gateway and without the remote DNS
servers being on the list of my LAN interface’s DNS servers and with
the option to register my connection’s addresses in DNS left
unchecked. There is no discernable difference between the connectoids
for the two VPN connections.
Again, how does one get remote NetBIOS and DNS names to resolve
through a VPN connection? I thought I knew, but apparently I
don't. :-|
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