Question about using Linksys BEFVP41 VPN with WinXP

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.vpn (More info?)

Perhaps it's the late hour, but I just can't seem to get this figured
out.

I've got a Linksys BEFVP41 driving my home network, which consists of a
couple of PC's with drives shared, an HP multifunction printer, and a
network-enabled Tivo - all have static IP addresses. The WAN is via
cable modem, DHCP but registered by the BEFVP41 via dyndns so I can
refer to it by name.

My own PC is a laptop running WinXP, which plays quite nicely with all
this stuff when I'm home. I'd like to be able to access all these
devices when I'm on the road (either on the corporate LAN or via
wireless/dialup/etc.) as if I'm home - i.e. just fire up the connection
and print to my home printer or snag a file off one of the PCs, etc.

1) Can I do that, or have I completely missed the point here on the VPN?

2) Can I do that using only native functions of WinXP and the BEFVP41?
The instructions Linksys provides seem tailored for fixed IP addresses,
which I clearly don't have when travelling, and at the "Assign" step
WinXP threw an error (no valid device if I recall correctly). I also
tried just setting up a VPN via the "New Connection Wizard" but that
didn't work.

3) If a VPN client is needed, is there anything cheap other than the
ever-popular but apparently unavailable SSH Sentinel?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

-- Chris
________*________ Chris Barnabo, chris@spagnet.com
____________ \_______________/ http://www.spagnet.com
\__________/ / /
__\ \_______/ /__ "The heck with the Prime Directive,
\_______________/(- let's destroy something!"

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.vpn (More info?)

Chris Barnabo wrote:

> Perhaps it's the late hour, but I just can't seem to get this figured
> out.
>
I can tell you what has worked for me. We had a similar setup here with
that router prior to going wireless. Two differences we had compared to
your setup, one important and one probably irrelevant. The irrelevant
difference is that our router assigned all internal IP addresses (except
for the email server). The key difference, though, is that we had a
static IP address from our ISP that we assigned to the router. There is
probably a work around for non-static IPs in your case, but I don't know
what to do about it.

Our internal server that supports PPTP VPN is Win2k, and I'm not
familiar enough with XP Server to help you with that. We chose PPTP
because it's simple and we don't need a hyper-secure network. Many will
say that PPTP security is lame, but we don't have any sensitive data on
our network, and our web site is hosted off site.