Entering Correct info for VPN connection

Question

please suggest the correct configuration for entering information in order for my laptop to connect via VPN to my newly installed Leopard Server software. On my laptop, I have entered the following info on the System Preferences> network tab...
Configuration: Default
Server Address: 76.173.xx.xxx (my public IP address - do I need anything else?)
Account name: XXXXXX (same as the account name in Server)
under Authentication Settings, my password is fine and my shared secret is the same as on the Server.
Am I entering in everything correctly? i am most concerned as to how the server address is supposed to be written. thanks!!

Answer 1

Hi
If Appletalk is enabled server side and you simply enter the IP address afp is assumed as the protocol to be used. If you prefer the extra effort involved in typing afp:// followed by the IP address you can use that as well. If you want to use the smb service rather than afp simply type smb://followed by the IP address. The same thing applies to ftp services. The Finder supports reads only for ftp services.
If you are using VPN services you simply type in the private IP (LAN-side) address of the server rather than the public IP (WAN-side) address. Once a VPN connection has been established, the remote client behaves as if it is on the same LAN.
You can make a connection using the Public WAN address if you enable port forwarding to a single LAN IP address for services you are interested in. For example if you wanted to access your server remotely using afp you configure your router to forward requests for port 548 to the internal IP address of your server. You can use this method for as many services you like as well as how many your router supports. Most commercially available routers support 10-20. Depending on the router you may have to configure an appropriate firewall rule as well. When faced with that it makes more sense to use a single VPN connection.
I may be in danger of teaching granny to suck eggs but for what its worth for VPN connections to work successfully the remote client’s private IP address has to be different from the host site. For example if the remote site is on 192.168.1.x/24 as is the server then you won’t establish a connection. As far as the remote site is concerned its already connected to that network, why look elsewhere? 192.168.1.x/24 to 192.168.2.x/24 or 10.10.10.x/24 to 192.168.0.x/24 should result in successful VPN connections.
For a list or IP addresses reserved for private use:
http://www.iana.org/faqs/abuse-faq.htm#SpecialUseAddresses
Hope this helps, Tony