How do I find out the IP of my VPN server on the private interface?

I have a VPN connection set up to a Server 2003 system. It hands me
back a private IP address such as 169.254.243.17. I have unchecked the
"use default gateway" option because I want my Internet connection to
stay alive during this.

All is well, except now that I've connected, how on earth do I know the
IP of the server relative to the VPN connection? I can look in the
IGMP section of the IP Routing node in the RRAS manager and see that
its 169.254.165.196, but that's pretty darned labor intensive and it
changes on every connection.

If I use the Internet IP of the server, that of course goes out across
the public connection. I've tried enabling routing and forwarded on
the server and setting up a static route to the public IP using the
private VPN interface, but that didn't work.

It seems so simple, but maddeningly difficult...

Thanks,
Dave

Your server should not be using a 169.254.x.y IP address. These are
APIPA addresses which are issued by default if a DHCP server cannot be
found. They are not really suitable for this job.

Either find out why your RRAS server cannot get addresses from DHCP, or
give the server a static pool of addresses to use for this purpose.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I have a VPN connection set up to a Server 2003 system. It hands me
> back a private IP address such as 169.254.243.17. I have unchecked
> the "use default gateway" option because I want my Internet
> connection to stay alive during this.
>
> All is well, except now that I've connected, how on earth do I know
> the IP of the server relative to the VPN connection? I can look in
> the IGMP section of the IP Routing node in the RRAS manager and see
> that its 169.254.165.196, but that's pretty darned labor intensive
> and it changes on every connection.
>
> If I use the Internet IP of the server, that of course goes out across
> the public connection. I've tried enabling routing and forwarded on
> the server and setting up a static route to the public IP using the
> private VPN interface, but that didn't work.
>
> It seems so simple, but maddeningly difficult...
>
> Thanks,
> Dave

Where can I specify that? I'm running this VPN server on a machine
with a single NIC, so I can't use the RRAS wizard.

I set the pool up under NAT/Basic Firewall, but that seemed to have no
effect and it still handed out a 169.254.x.x address to the client.

- Dave

Bill Grant wrote:
> Your server should not be using a 169.254.x.y IP address. These are
> APIPA addresses which are issued by default if a DHCP server cannot be
> found. They are not really suitable for this job.
>
> Either find out why your RRAS server cannot get addresses from DHCP, or
> give the server a static pool of addresses to use for this purpose.
>
> (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> > I have a VPN connection set up to a Server 2003 system. It hands me
> > back a private IP address such as 169.254.243.17. I have unchecked
> > the "use default gateway" option because I want my Internet
> > connection to stay alive during this.
> >
> > All is well, except now that I've connected, how on earth do I know
> > the IP of the server relative to the VPN connection? I can look in
> > the IGMP section of the IP Routing node in the RRAS manager and see
> > that its 169.254.165.196, but that's pretty darned labor intensive
> > and it changes on every connection.
> >
> > If I use the Internet IP of the server, that of course goes out across
> > the public connection. I've tried enabling routing and forwarded on
> > the server and setting up a static route to the public IP using the
> > private VPN interface, but that didn't work.
> >
> > It seems so simple, but maddeningly difficult...
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Dave

Sorry, I moments later found out where to set it. I set it to hand out
192.168.3.2 - 192.168.3.254, and my server now seems to use 192.168.3.1
for itself.

Can I rely on it staying there, though? And why is there not a place
to specify which address on that subnet mask that the server will use?

- Dave

The server just takes its own "virtual interface" IP address (ie the
internal interface) from the pool, then allocates the rest to clients as
required.

If the pool addresses are in the same IP subnet as the LAN machines, the
server will act as a proxy for the clients. If they are in a different IP
subnet you will need to route the traffic through the RRAS server.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Sorry, I moments later found out where to set it. I set it to hand
> out 192.168.3.2 - 192.168.3.254, and my server now seems to use
> 192.168.3.1 for itself.
>
> Can I rely on it staying there, though? And why is there not a place
> to specify which address on that subnet mask that the server will use?
>
> - Dave