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rajabhat

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Got VPN going with Watchguard--how to Remote Desktop??

Hi all, here's my office setup: Watchguard X5 router, which connects several workstations to a Windows 2000 Server. The Watchguard connects to a Bellsouth DSL modem with a fixed IP address. To access from home, I managed to get a Mobile User VPN going, and can ping the router. Now the main goal is to be able to do a remote desktop so I can run our office program/s from home....but can't do; I'm not able to do a remote desktop on any of the office PCs.

I've searched all over the Internet including Watchguard's site, and can't find an answer. Watchguard says its to do with setting up WINS and DNS and such but they give no useful examples or info. But I know there's *got* to be a way!!!

It would be so grand to be able to do this. Since I have a static IP at the office, I found that I could do a direct remote desktop, as long as I configured the router to do so. However, I consider that to be a security issue so I decided not to keep that open.

Thanks very much.
Raja
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rajabhat

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OK guys, I've found the answer myself since I posted the above question. My home Router, a Linksys, has an IP of 192.168.2.1 and my office Watchguard router had the SAME IP address!! So today I changed the home one to 192.168.3.1 and voila, Remote Desktop works like a charm!

I might comment also, that I'm glad I took all those hours to use a VPN tunnel to do remote desktop, because leaving my office system open to remote desktop is probably fraught with security risks. So much safer to create a VPN tunnel and do remote desktop through it.

Raja
Avatar of Rob Williams
Glad to hear you were able resolve Raja. VPN's require different subnets at ether end of the tunnel in order for routing to function properly. Much better to have the VPN running than a direct Remote Desktop connection. Not only is it more secure, but you don't need custom port configuration for each computer to which you want to connect, you can simply use their local IP.
Were you able to get name resolution working OK as well?
Hi RobWill,
As to name resolution, that's another matter altogether. I've tried reading anything I can find, but I just can't figure out how to map the office network drives from home. The Watchguard router has a place to enter the WINS of the server, but I have not tried it..I'm not sure that's the answer.......
Raja
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Rob Williams
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Whew......Rob, I can't thank you enough for your tremendous input!! I've printed out all what you have said, and will work on it this evening. I'll let you know how it goes!!
Raja
Very welcome Raja. Good luck with it.
I did notice a typo. On e of the lines above should read; "will cause the SafeNet adapter to show up under the Windows NETWORK connections window"
--Rob
Hi Rob,
I've carefully gone over what you described above. Its been a long long time since DOS so I don't remember much of UNC and doing this through command prompts. Well, since remote desktop works, I'm quite happy with that, and that's mainly what I need to do by remote anyhow. And I'm beginning to feel I've not got much to gain by using command prompts. So I guess I'll let sleeping dogs lie! I'm going to click on "accept" your long answer, though, because it really attempts to get to the root of what I was trying to do.
Thanks,
Raja
Thanks Raja, perhaps it will be useful in the future.
Simple way, if you should want to use names, is option #2, LMHosts file. But I must say I usually just use IP's myself.
Cheers,
--Rob