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Mac to Windows SMB (via VPN)

Seasought

Seasought

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 3, 2005
1,093
0
I have a VPN connection between my home VPN router and work VPN router. I have a VPN Netgear router here at home (it's attached to a Dell desktop) and there is a Linksys VPN router at work.

The VPN connection (gateway to gateway) between the two routers is established fine, I can ping both intranets by their private IP's (example 192.168.x.x) and I can VNC to both private networks whether I'm at work or home via the VPN connection.

The problem I run into is using SMB from my Mac at home to my work desktops or my Mac laptop at work to my home desktop (Dell) to access Windows shared folders. Sometimes I can access the Windows shared folders (after which it drops the connection to the shared item shortly thereafter) or it never makes the connection. The impression is that it is extremely slow or timing out when it attempts this.

I've looked at /etc/smb.conf a bit, but I'm having difficulty in finding any relevant information regarding configuring this file. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
i can't help with any technical details but i had exactly the same problem a while back with a generic router - extremely unstable connections, very slow, and sometimes not at all. When i got a NetGear RangeMax (which has, like most new models, VPN tunneling supported) the connection problems disappeared. Are you certain both routers support VPN fully?

It's still extremely slow however, particularly when copying large numbers of files into folders with lots of files - there seems to be an enormous amount of back and forth chat going on between the servers (such that even when i'm only uploading files, i appear to be receiving an even larger amount of data back...)

maybe its the client software I'm using (Cisco) or maybe this is just an inherent problem with the VPN encryption process and SMB connections, don't know i'm afraid.
 
frankblundt said:
Are you certain both routers support VPN fully?
Click to expand...

I'm using a Netgear FVG318 router and the work router is a Linksys RV402 router. Other employees have connections setup without problems, but they are using Windows to Windows and Linksys VPN routers from home.

maybe its the client software I'm using (Cisco) or maybe this is just an inherent problem with the VPN encryption process and SMB connections, don't know i'm afraid.
Click to expand...

I may end up setting up some sort of FTP server on my intranet behind my router at home and access my files via VPN through that means. Since it would be assigned a private IP and not be exposed to the Internet that might be a suitable alternative.

I'll just have to make sure I lock it down properly.
 
clykins90 said:
I don't know exactly what your problem is but have you looked at this?

http://www.gracion.com/vpn/
Click to expand...

I experimented with digitunnel prior to purchasing my hardware VPN / Firewall router. I had been wanting to invest in a VPN router and the problems with getting client-to-gateway connections (digitunnel to the VPN) prompted me to invest.

With my current setup I'm doing a VPN router-to-VPN router connection (tunnel between two VPN routers).

Thanks for the suggestion though.
 
Additional note:

Both the home VPN router and the work VPN router have their MTU set to 1500 bytes.
 
Have you tried enabling logging on your home router to see what its reporting?

Also, did you change your Workgroup to be the same as the PC you are trying to access?
 
kingjr3 said:
Have you tried enabling logging on your home router to see what its reporting?

Also, did you change your Workgroup to be the same as the PC you are trying to access?
Click to expand...

I have logging enabled. It states the following when I attempt to access SMB:

Service access request successful Src 49305 Dst 80 from WAN n/w Source: 10.0.0.1 Destination: 192.168.1.1

This repeats several times on the logs of the router at home. The work router doesn't have any errors (I can post a snippet of both logs if necessary).

Yes, I changed the workgroup under Directory Access accordingly, no luck.
 
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