While successfully enjoying the VPN services sometimes we encounter a problem where the Client VPN software makes the login of the user successful but fails to browse the LAN. Now that’s a major problem when you want to use the VPN services to securely roam over the internet while staying connected with the LAN as well. This problem can halt all the operations that are necessary for a local computer belonging to a specific organization. The service that comes to a halt due to the unavailable access of the LAN is DNS services, DHCP services, etc. In that situation, you will feel stuck as your computer will not be able to resolve the DNS queries and will fail to get an IP address from the DHCP server.
Ensure these before troubleshooting
To troubleshoot this problem we need to follow certain steps but before doing that you need to ensure some of the important things. Some of them are:
- Ensure that the workgroup is set to the targeted domain on all the available clients working on windows systems.
- After establishing the PPTP session, manually map the Uniform naming connections(UNC) to the required resources.
- Also, check the TCP/IP settings to identify any other configurational issue.
Troubleshooting the problem
After doing and reviewing all the above things, now you can start doing the troubleshooting part. Simply follow the steps to get rid of this problem.
- Browsing checking
The error message “system error 53 occurred. Network path not found” will appear while trying to browse the LAN. It means that the client is not able to resolve the NetBIOS names. Check if the client system has a WINS server address assigned or not. If not then you have to assign a WINS server address by manually adding the server address. Now try to connect again and start browsing.
- Setting up the default gateway
Check the default gateway for the PPTP connection. You can also check the routing table using the ‘ROUTE PRINT’ command. If you have set the gateway towards the ISP then every client request to browse the LAN will move towards the ISP instead of moving towards the VPN. Many times the NetBIOS names are blocked by the routers and firewalls. Some ISPs also block the NetBIOS names to be transmitted from their infrastructure, as they are Microsoft proprietary.
To deal with that you have to remove the routes from the routing table. Then simply add a static route towards the virtual interface of the VPN server. The address of the virtual interface can be the first available address in the DHCP address pool of the Remote access server.
- Enable NetBEUI
You can also go for the NetBEUI on the Remote access server instead of using a TCP/IP. On the VPN ports of the server, simply enable NetBEUI for the incoming connections, and on the client-side, use the NetBEUI in the PPTP connection. This will be helpful to establish a client-server connection with NetBEUI instead of TCP/IP. This is the most effective solution to browse the LAN while using a VPN.
Conclusion
In this article, we have tried to troubleshoot the major issue ‘Client successfully logs in but unable to browse the LAN’ which causes problems while using a VPN connection. You can implement the above ways to get rid of this problem and can enjoy your VPN services.