Pocket PC 2003 (SE) connection setting to access internet ..

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.pocketpc (More info?)

Hi all,

on my internal (lets say company) network I have a web application which has
to be accessed through a proxy. I need to access this application through a
proxy - the proxy actually manipulates the output of the actual web server
application.

The application itself will be used by roadwarriers, wo I need to access it
from the "Internet".

I set up a VPN server to access the internal network from "Internet" through
IPSec/L2TP. I use the WLAN or GPRS device to access the internet and "dial"
into my secured network through a VPN tunnel. This works fine.

Through configuring the web servers IP address in the exception list of the
PPC I can access the server application directly (proxy is not used in this
case - but I need to use the proxy). I also have configured a proxy for the
VPN (or actually for "my work" ) but my understanding from the exceptions list
is that the PPC handles these URLs as internal and does not use the proxy.
Correct?

On the other hand, if I do not configure the URL of my web application (with
dotted IP addresses) in the exception list, the VPN tunnel gets disconnected
if I fetch the
pages.

At the end this leads to the question how PPC handles internal and external
URLs - I have no clue how it works. As I understand the proxy settings in
"my work"
will/should be used to access external URLs if the PPC is connected to the
internal network through a VPN connection. Though you should be able to
access "Internet URLs" while you are connected to your company network
through a VPN tunnel (and your are connected to the internet underneath the
VPN). Is this correct - should this work?

On the other hand there is a definition that the PPC disconnects when
"external" URLs are requested. These two things don't fit together. Either
there is a possibility to access external URLs through a proxy (if connected
through a VPN), then the PPC must not disconnect the VPN connection when
external URLs are requested. Or there is a rule that it is not possible to
access external URLs through a VPN tunnel, but what is the proxy setting for
in this case?

Unfortunately there seems to be no documentation about the behaviour of PPCs
connection manager with this respect. Or is there any detaild documentation
out there?

The strange thing is that I got things working by chance on an iPAQ with PPC
2003 (1st edition). I played around days and days and at some point in time
it worked suddenly. But I have no idea why. If I have a tunnel connected and
a proxy configured. The URL is accessed through the proxy as I need it. I
don't have the target URL in the exeption list.

Now - since days - I try to set up the same on another device (PPC 2003 2nd
edition). I compared all settings over and over again, I even looked through
the registry settings. But I can't get it working on that device.

There must be something I did on the first device what I have not set on the
second. Or is there a difference between PPC 2003 1st and 2nd edition? Do
you have a clue for me?

Thanks in advance!

Ingmar