I am establishing a vpn link between my home and office and need some advice.

At home I am running SSH Sentinel and XP Pro

At Office I am using a LinkSys VPN router and Win 2K pro.

I ahve established my tunnel but I am not accessing the remote computer printer or anything. Any help would be rewarded with a weeks good luck.

Verify with your Internet Service Provider that they allow VPNs.

Some don't and that will frustrate you to no end unless you know for sure...

I am not familiar with SSH Sentinal, but what VPN client are you using? Microsoft's that comes with XP?

__________________
John

1995 E320 - 115kmi+ Smoke Silver/Cream (Wife's Wagon)
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1984 300D - 242kmi+ Black/Palomino (Retired)

The VPN tunnel is connected so I think I am OK as far as my providers go.

Sounds like a routing or firewall issue within the LinkSys. A setting.

I found the website for the SSH Sentinel product with a Google search.

What specific LinkSys model number router are you using?

Can you ping anything through the tunnel at all?

Ken300D

Thanks Ken it's a BEFVP41. What is the command to ping the tunnel?

Have you installed the Linksys Bi-admin software?

No, I was told it was not needed, provided I having a working tunnel.

If the destination IP is 23.45.678.1 what would be the command to ping the tunnel? I know the simple ping command but is there command for pinging a tunnel.

OK, so the LinkSys is shown on the interoperability list for the SSH Sentinel software - good.

Once you establish the tunnel, you should have full TCP/IP connectivity. So everything you'd normally do over the network should work from your connected PC. Like the web browser - you should be able to establish the tunnel, and then get a web page.

Ping is the basic connection test. Not always reliable as a test because firewalls are tending to block ping replies in order to improve security.

So, ping works from a DOS prompt/window.

ping www.novell.com

is the basic command.

If that doesn't work, try pinging something internal to your work network, like the windows machine you are trying to connect to.

Ken300D

Thanks but what is the ping command for a distant network with a subnet?

If the ip is 24.56.67.666 and the computer on that network is 198.168.1.102 what command would I use?

With a VPN, the idea is that you can ping both internal and external IP addresses to the LinkSys, even if the internal addresses are on a "private" subnet. As in Network Address Translation (NAT) addresses provided by DHCP. Without the VPN, all external addresses are blocked by the firewall and NAT systems from accessing the internal network.

So, from your DOS window, just ping the IP address you want to test.

ping 123.456.78.9

or

ping 192.168.1.5

-----

The VPN tunnel essentially connects you to the inside of the LinkSys box - so you should be able to ping anything that can be pinged from a command prompt on the LinkSys.

How about getting a web page through the tunnel - does that work?

Ken300D

Nada on the ping how do I get a web page?

With an operational VPN, your PC end is IP-tunneled to the LinkSys.

So, you establish a tunnel properly, and then everything you do on the PC (network-wise) is routed through the tunnel to the LinkSys.

So, you should be able to just open the web browser on the PC and get your favorite web page. Your web request from the PC travels through the tunnel to the LinkSys, and then the LinkSys forwards the web request across its Internet connection to the web site.

Sounds like you are authenticating properly to the LinkSys but something is not configured right to actually establish the IP tunnel.

Ken300D

We are not having problems tunneling or internet. It's a Windows configuration that seems to be the problem.

You have this document, don't you?

http://www.ssh.com/documents/31/ssh_sentinel_14_linksys.pdf


Ken300D