Incredibly slow Browsing in finder over VPN

Question

I VPN into my work server - I'll be honest I don't know what server setup they are using other than it is Windows based - regardless, I get wonderful speeds browsing on an XP box but dismal if not Finder Killing speeds on my Mac just trying to get a directory listing - forget about transferring files. Often I have to relaunch the finder just to get back into browsing local files. The odd thing is that going through to the network share via terminal seems to be about 300x times faster.
Browsing Internet through VPN seems normal enough, I can share music easily enough and email seems fairly robust, but any SMB share is slower than molasses. I have searched and searched for almost 2 hours now and tried pretty much every solution I found - nothing has worked. Duplex settings, ipV6 settings, hacking the smb config files etc. Nothing. Is anyone else running into this issue? I use the latest CISCO VPN client BTW - given to me by my admins at work.
I know I have been less than informative on the server configs - I will grab what I can from my network admins tomorrow to see if that sparks any more ideas as to the issue. Any help is appreciated - I may just go nuts
Message was edited by: ChrisLacey

Answer 1

For ressources to appear automatically in the finder you normally have to be in the same LAN which is not the case if you connect via VPN. If your Mac Mini is running OS X Server you should be able to configure Wide Area Bonjour which can be activated in your DNS configuration. In addition to that, in you VPN network configuration on the client you should use your server DNS address (an not the one of your ISP). Only your DNS on your server knows about your local services and can broadcast them to your client. It's what I believe the MobileMe service does when you configure it appropriately.
That should be the theory. However, I didn't manage to get this into work anyway. I wonder if anyone has.
- Juergen