Not long ago I got the task of setting up a small server for an engineer in our building. He has a small office with one other person working for him. The idea was for him to have a central repository for files, a system backing up those files, and the ability to remotely access all of those files.

I recommended a Windows SBS 2003 box. The client obliged.

All was fine until the issue of VPN came up. I’ve done VPN’s before, but usually it’s through hardware, not through the OS. The client eventually was paid in full, and the issue still wasn’t completely resolved. I felt terrible about it, so I made it my priority to fix. The client was really cool, and I didn’t want them to feel cheated or upset in any way.

I won’t go through the whole tutorial on how to setup an SBS box, but I will say that usually, it’s very intuitive. Well, when I set up the box, I configured it to work on one subnet. However, the modem supplied to the client wouldn’t allow GRE packets through, so they needed to get a new modem.

When that modem arrived, it didn’t work with their existing Linksys wireless router. So I used the modem as the router, and plugged the wireless box into it, and ran it as a separate subnet. Keep in mind, this was after I had already configured the SBS box for the previous subnet.

I thought I had configured the server to work with the new network settings, but I missed a couple of items.

Clear ARP cache.

Since RRAS was started, you couldn’t clear the ARP cache (the table with the addresses of machines according to the old subnet). I had to stop the RRAS service to clear the ARP cache. Keep that in mind if you have to move an SBS box from one network to another.

Change ALL network settings. When I changed the TCP/IP information for the network adapter (only one), I only changed the information on the front dialog box. Which means I forgot to change the WINS information! Since the client was using VPN so he could navigate to files on the network, that was pretty important.

Also, I needed to add the dns suffix to the DNS settings area as well.

The moral of the story, take the time to get it done right the first time.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2007 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.