Not all routers are created equal

A mentor once instilled in me the following mantra:

"it shouldn't be that hard".

In other words technology should "just work".  (Unfortunately we all know this is not entirely true all the time.)

Yet I try to live by that mantra, and not get sucked in by the "complicated fix". But over the last three days, I have been doing battle with routers - or more specifically one router in particular. A Cisco WAG310G.  I installed successfully as the end point for a VOIP solution.  [That part went very well, by the way and WAS simple].

However, in trying to get a VPN to work through the new router, I'd forgotten to apply the check the simple things first...  (no, not "is the damn thing plugged in?",) but, "did you read the spec of the machine to see it can do what you are asking it to do?". The answer is "no".

In my defence, the fact that the router had the GRE47 protocol as  a service that could be chosen for pass-through, would have indicated ( I would have thought) that the router was capable of VPN.

I mean, is not a VPN a simple, basic requirement of all modern routers?

One would have thought so.

To confound matters, I was also blinded by the oft and varied reports of Win7 and the troubles of getting a VPN to work with that new beast. The old, stable XP-based VPN was still working fine - even with the new router installed. (But actually it, too had stopped and I hadn't noticed).  grrr

On the support site for this router - there is a prominent link on How to setup a VPN.

http://www.linksysbycisco.com/ANZ/en/support/WAG310G

A much more helpful article has screengrabs that show the missing VPN tab in the security settings of the router's gui:

http://linksys.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/linksys.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=4239

and if you are "encountering difficulties" try:

Encountering Difficulties Connecting to the VPN Tunnel Using a ADSL Gateway

not that this will help if you don't RTFM !

VPN - it can't be THAT hard (- can it?)

The VPN solution sounds perfect.. "just set up a tunnel through the public network for your private use..."

However, one can do a LOT of reading around a subject without getting to the nitty gritty of what to do.

This is one of those rare occasions, however, when I found a how-to summary that succinctly described what to do, without too much technical detail, but with enough of what you need to know to get it working.

Rather than rewrite Larry's words, I will quote his post in full here

http://forums.techarena.in/small-business-server/955926.htm

Oh - and to answer the question of browsing - simply map a drive on the client machine to \\ip.address.of.server\share using the domain authentication.

Easy.

24-04-2008

Larry Struckmeyer Posts: n/a

Re: VPN Connects but unable to browse Network HELP!! Hi: In general, I recommend RWW over VPN for connecting remotely. If you have a particular issue that requires a VPN connection, I would appreciate if you would share. To use VPN with your SBS you must first run the CEICW and permit that service to be used. Then run the RRAS wizard to setup the WAN ports. These are the second and third wizards on the To Do List in Server Management. You must have a router/firewall that has port 1723 forwarded to your SBS and that allows GRE 47 to pass. Some older devices do not allow this. And theother hardware related issue is that the SBS ip ranges and the remote ip range must be different. That is, if SBS is 192.168.16.x internal, and 192.168.100.x external, the remote cannot have the same numbers in the first three octets. Are there any specific errors in your event logs, or specific messages that occur And as always, I recommend the SBS BPA. Run that and do what it recommends. http://www.sbsbpa.com/ -- Larry Please post the resolution to your issue so that all can benefit.