VPN

I have a PPoE Internet connection over a business DSL.

We have a Windows domain controller that handles DHCP, and all DNS, both internal (dynamic updates) for the "office" domain, and external, for which it queries the Internet root hints servers.

What is the best way to deal with name resolution for PPTP clients, given that I want to keep DHCP on the Windows server? The m0n0wall (1.311b) pulls down the ISP's DNS information when it establishes a PPoE connection, but that's obviously no good for resolving servers on the LAN.

Many thanks.

I have practically the same problem, so I will try to revive this thread.

Setup is a fairly basic m0n0wall v.1.33 with a WAN connection that has a static IP. I would like to retire an old PIX that is only used for VPN connections. PPTP VPN connections is working perfectly with the new m0n0wall, BUT my boss isn't too impressed that he now has to use IP address instead of DNS names when he tries to access resources and shares when he is working from home.

At the moment the DHCP server is our PDC (Windows server 2003) but if the only to make it work is to let the m0n0wall also act as DHCP server for the entire network I could probably convince him.

I have tried to manually set the IP address of the windows server as primary DNS on my client but it doesn't seem to help. Most of the clients are Windows 7 computers, but a few iPads and android-phones will also use the PPTP VPN although I'm not sure DNS resolved internal host names are crucial to them.

How can I get the client to access LAN resources by DNS name from a PPTP VPN client???

BUMP

IP address and DNS server assignment via PPTP has nothing to do with DHCP, so it's OK that your Windows server is acting as a DHCP server.

The logic in m0n0wall for the DNS servers to assign to PPTP VPN clients is as follows:

• if the DNS forwarder is enabled:
  • primary DNS = m0n0wall's own IP address
  • secondary DNS = first DNS server entered on General Setup page (if any)
• if the DNS forwarder is disabled:
  • DNS servers entered on General Setup page

In either case, you need to make sure that m0n0wall uses your Active Directory server for DNS (by manually entering its address on the General Setup page); otherwise, queries from PPTP VPN clients may go to your ISPs DNS servers, which obviously knows nothing about your internal network names.

If it still doesn't work, check that the proper DNS servers have indeed been assigned to the PPTP VPN client (using ipconfig /all). Sometimes Windows can also be stubborn and use the DNS servers of its local Internet connection even while connected through the VPN (make sure that the "Use Default Gateway on Remote Network" option is checked).

Problem solved. Looks like it was a combination of wrong DNS-settings and firewall rule for the tunnel. Only TCP traffic was allowed which made it impossible to ping servers to check the configuration and get DNS requests through. Thanks for the help!