being on the domain while on a vpn

No, you cannot get to an unsecured website while you are connected to a VPN.  It is a fundamental violation of security protocol, when you are connected to a secure connection like a VPN, the browser will not allow you to connect to an unsecured connection, like a basic web page.  If it did do this, someone could hack the connection and use the internet to get into your secure VPN and destroy it.

Open the advanced IP settings under the VPN configuration. Make sure that the WINS server is set to the WINS server on the main network (if you don't know the ip of the WINS server try the IP of the server that handles DNS for the internal network). This will let net bios names work throught the VPN again.  When you connect through a VPN you are given an IP address that is outside of the subnet of the main network. net bios is not routable, so it wont cross over the router.

I disagree completely, sorry.  My answer is the correct one, this is a known security problem and the inability to browse insecure websites while on a VPN is by necessary design.  Check you background on this and you will see that mine is the only correct answer on this question, it is not a DNS issue, it is a necessary part of VPNing.

I chose the other two as from experience, I KNOW that I can access internal company HTTP (unsecured) websites when connected to the VPN

You have stated that this is fundamentally impossible, which is a flawed statement.

In my experience with VPNs and all that surrounds them, WINS or FQDNs are most likely to blame for this issue - they cover the 2 options that are 99% of the time responsible for these issues.

I think you are confused with internal and external websites....

-red

Sorry I have not responded.  I think on this one all I had to do was add the ip address of the server to the hosts file to get the computer to connect to it while they were vpn'd to the network.  Hope this helps.  Thanks for all the responses..

Hi americanmobile, thanks for returning

Thank you also for confirming that this was, as I suspected, a problem with name resolution (as initially proposed by r_naren22atyahoo)

Unfortunately, you appear to have selected an incorrect answer, I have requested that this question be re-opened so that you can correct it

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21962379/Wrong-answer-selected.html

This answer should be selected as the correct one -> http:#17006683

thanks

-red

Thanks for the correction Guys.

redseatechnologies, you have done a good job,
i am not saying this coz you have awarded the points to me.
You are trying to  select the answer that is most suitable to the problem the Author was experiancing.

scrathcyboy, i cant more argue with you on the security design,
However 1 main use of the VPN is to connect to the office network and work locally,

If security is the issue, then
We have to implement policies on the end user who iniciates the VPN connection
1 way is to use the Firewall VPN client, where you can push the policies to the end-user
which forces the end-user to work on only the VPN tunnel
and block the general internet traffic when working with VPN.
However when he wants to access the internet(unsecured sites or any sites) has to go via the Office Proxy and firewall through VPN

regards
Naren

For further correspondence on this, could you all please post here

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21962379/Wrong-answer-selected.html

Thanks

-red

what is the correct answer?

the first answer is correct, however, you must add that name in the hosts file on the machine you are using to vpn to the network....thanks to everyone..