RE: Looking for a PVN-only server to put behind the firewll

[sean.kelly () lanston com]

> Looking for recommendations for a private virtual network "server"
> (95/98/NT software or "network appliance") to place on the internal
> network side of a firewall.
>
> Objective is to have external/Internet users, via software on their
> Win 95/98/NT laptop / PC and their standard connection to the
> Internet, to be able to mount shares being made available by the
> corporate NT server on the internal network. The firewall would allow
> external connections to tunnel through it to the internal VPN server.
> The VPN server would handle authentication, data encryption /
> decryption, addressing / routing, etc.

NT Server includes a VPN solution, though hackers are quick to point out
that it does have some security problems.  That said, it's free if you have
NT, works as part of their RAS server (in fact, if the user has the "query
for callback" option enabled then it will ask them if they want a callback
if they connect to the VPN as well as when dialing in to the RAS server --
weird), and is meant to do just what you describe.  I don't know of any
method that will actually let you mount shares.  MS networks use NetBIOS (do
I have this right?) for a lot of their internal stuff and in my experience
this doesn't seem to work over either RAS or their VPN.  It could be that
you could make it work -- I haven't really had enough of a need to try very
hard.

Sean