VPN Access - HOWTO (settings explained for Rogers AT&T)

[Guest tsnet]

Hey guys,

After posting here and on the MS forums and getting help/ideas from different people, I finally got my Mio to connect to my laptop at home and sync with it over GPRS. Amazing and it does work!

So if you want to know how, check this step by step guide:

1. First thing: your GPRS plan must support VPN traffic. Without it, you will fail right here. Rogers AT&T in Canada (after calling them 3 times) finally got all working. The problem is when you call them and tell them you need Internet access on the phone they do not realize you have a phone that can pretty much do any protocol over the GPRS network. So they give you WAP access only. This will NOT work for Internet Explorer and VPN for example. So when calling Rogers, make sure you tell them you need access to WAP, Internet and VPN through the access points GOAM.COM, INTERNET.COM and VPN.COM. This will make you get the right plan. Cost is posted on their website. The best deal now is CDN$ 50.00 per month for 10MB per month but it is unlimited for the first 6 months. After that you can use 10MB per month paying CDN$ 6 per extra MB. VPN access (where they give you a public IP) adds another CDN$ 10.00 to the monthly cost.

2. Settings you need on the phone:

- GPRS Connections:

--> Name: Rogers GPRS, connects to the Internet. Access Point: vpn.com. Username: wapuser1, password: wap. NO NEED for DNS, IP.

--> Name: Rogers WAP, connects to the Internet. Access Point: goam.com. Username: wapuser1, password: wap. NO NEED for DNS, IP.

- Proxy Connections:

--> Name: Rogers WAP Proxy, connects from the Internet to WAP Network. Proxy: 208.200.67.150:9201, Type:WAP, Username: wapuser1, password: wap.

- VPN Connections (here you will create a connection to your VPN server at home or at work):

--> Name: Work/Home VPN, Server: your server IP address, From the Internet to My Corporate Network, Username/password/domain (use the ones you use at work or at home). Make sure with your IT guys at work you do have dial-in access enabled for the VPN. Windows 2003 has this DISABLE by default for all users.

That is all for the connections.

3. The VPN side.

Here is where the thing gets tricky. The phone by itself, when you launch Activesync AND you have under MENU | OPTIONS | PC SETTINGS, 'Include PC sync remotely when synchronizing' CHECKED, will go to the VPN automatically. There is nothing you need to do to tell the phone to connect to the VPN. Simple as that.

The problem is under Activesync the phone knows the PC name it syncs. But this is a NetBIOS name and NOT a FQDN (DNS name basically). So when it connects to the VPN, it simply cannot find the PC and Activesync never works. The trick is to have a WINS server. Make sure:

1. There is a WINS server available on the VPN side.

2. There is an entry on the WINS for your PC name.

3. DHCP on the VPN side is set to retrieve WINS information (option 44).

After setting up WINS on my Windows 2003 Server (that is my RAS VPN), I was able to sync over GPRS! I almost cried! ;)

Bandwidth I am not sure yet how much it uses. I am trying to get that GPRS Traffic app to work but no luck yet. It installs but when I go to settings, to enable monitoring, it freezes. :lol:

But I will figure that out. :D

That is all! Enjoy Activesync over GPRS in Canada.

Cheers,

Cláudio Rodrigues

Microsoft MVP - Terminal Services

http://www.terminal-services.NET