VPN Never Connects

[Guest kkrull]

At work I have a PPTP firewall. Basic windows can VPN into it with the default settings and a change to include windows domain and allow MSCHAP2. There is no adding of certificates and IPSec Pre-Shared key that I can tell or that my network administrators are aware of. You simply add a vpn connection, give it the vpn name, type in your user name and password and you are in. The VPN is a Cyberguard 530. On page 76 of the manual it appears that it does not support certificates.

Now if I am behind my firewall I can active-sync my WM5 phone to exchange, no problem. But outside the firewall I can never connect. This leads me to believe that I have a VPN problem. I have followed the instructions on how to install a VPN and I simply cannot make it work. The thing that is most suspicious is the IPSec authentication on WM5. The only two options are Pre-Shared Key and Certificate. So I leave Pre-Shared Key blank.

When I try to active-sync my phone the closest I ever get is a message “the remote party has ended this connection” support code 0x8502000F “the server could not be reached”

As for another clue, when I try to ping my vpn from the outside on my notebook, I always get a reply (not sure what port though). When I try to ping my vpn from my WM5 phone using myIP, if I leave it at the default port 80 I get port not reachable, but if I ping port 1723 I get “Server is reachable”. This leads me to believe that my WM5 phone can see the VPN, but for some other reason it can’t connect.

Any suggestions? I am thinking the next thing to do is check the VPN appliance logs to see if that gives a clue.

Are there any utilities to test a VPN connection other than to try to ping some internal machines?