[BC] Help on VPN setup

[Cowboy]

On Saturday 01 October 2005 14:31, George Nicholas wrote:

> In theory, once the VPN tunnel is working, you should be able to ping the
> internal IP address of computers on the other side, ie 192.168.0.5.  If you
> can, then you have connectivity (at least you can ping)

 That's pretty straight-forward, and crucial.
 Can you, in fact, via the VPN tunnel, ping any of the non-routable 
 private block IP's on the other side of the tunnel ?
 If so, then the public side is not too relevent, and the tunnel should
 act like a slow, but direct, ethernet connection.
 If you can not, then can you ping the public, routable side of the router ?
 Since M$ screwed up with the Ping Of Death, even if you can not, this is not
 definitive, but if you can, then you'ld know with certainty that there is a 
 problem with the tunnel.
 If you can not, then you need some other protocal to which the public interface
 will respond, in order to do the job ping and pong were designed for.

 In the example IP given above, I can't help but mention that using
 the special case mask numbers zero or 255 as a network, or machine
 address is a really, really, REALLY bad idea.
 That alone could completely screw up an otherwise fully functional network, as
 M$ once again, chose to ignore convention.
 How any particular element responds to a mask depends entirely on which
 school it's from.
 Pure M$ ignores masks, depending on context, and sometimes every address is
 treated discreetly, or not depending on the context, while anything else takes a mask
 for what it is, and the response becomes configuration dependent as a result of 
 applying that mask.

 While the machines may well ( being M$ machines ) respond to the zero, or a 255, the router
 may interpret this as a request to route to the one and only one machine that has every
 possible individual IP address in that entire block.
 Clearly, an impossibility, so the router may simply drop the packet as a non-routable error.

 Once the VPN tunnel is established, this should not matter, as the packets with the
 garbage addresses will be encased in wrappers that pass through the VPN, and depend
 on the routing on the other side entirely.

-- 
Cowboy

http://cowboys.homeip.net

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 Indifferent to type of drink.  Ex: "Oh, you can get me anything.
 I'm omnibiblious."