Better understanding of Sonicwall VPN DNS and NETBIOS required - networking

I would be interested in hearing from anyone that has successfully established a VPN connection through a Sonicwall (TZ-100) device on to a SBS-2008 network as I currently have VPN access (through the Sonicwall Global VPN Client), but I am currently using a local user account from the firewall device.
As I am not establishing the VPN request using my Windows-AD username and password, I am having to enter my windows credentials to access network resources. Launching Outlook does not show my mail (even if I type in my password when promted). If I type in \\MyServerName\SharedFolder into Explorer, then I see the 'offline' sync folders stored on my laptop. On the otherhand, if I type \\192.168.100.10\SharedFolder (lets assume this is the LAN IP4 address for my server), then once I enter my windows credentials, I can see ALL the 'online' folders. Currently, for mail, I am using OWA while connected on the VPN. This current approach is not ideal. I feel there is a DNS, NETBIOS problem with my current set up.
Question, so that I can work from home in a 'normal uninterrupted' manner, do I need to activate 1. Radius by itself?, 2. LDAP by itself? or 3. Radius + LDAP together? Any pointers would be helpful as I would like to approach the Sonicwall support team armed with a little more info and having read some friendly material.

The problem was resolved by changing the DNS address on the Sonicwall device to the server rather than inherritting the external DNS addresses from the ISP. Also the DHCP service was routed to the server for VPN traffic.
There is no need to set up any additional services on the server to get LDAP running on the Sonicwall device. With a little help from the Sonicwall support, my network now works as one would expect.

Related

Active directory physical setup

There have been many articles on various forums on how to setup mcrosoft active directory domain services. I am a bit new to the field, so please bear with my ignorance. I have a very basic query whose answer i am not able to find. I have an office of 20 people where i would like to deploy AD Domain services to have a better control. i want to know how should i set my network PHYSICALLY. I have a router supplied by my internet provider. Where exactly should i put my server? Can i plug my server anyhere in the network and connect the users through domain, or the main internet wire should plug into the server first and the users in turn be connected to the server. enter image description here I hope i am clear. Should internet ‘flow’ from the server which has AD to users, or i can put the serverver anywhere in the topology.
In a small size network like yours, 1 server should be enough. It should be somewhere behind the router. Plugging it into the switch is fine as it will have a internal address.
You will need DNS on your server which will install when you promote to a DC. All of your computers need to look at your server for DNS. Your Server's DNS should have a forwarder to your ISP DNS or to a public DNS. It doesn't matter if you server or your router does DHCP so long as it gives out the server Internal IP for DNS.
What would I do:
I would plug your ISP into the Router, Your Router into your Switch, and all computers + server into the Switch.
You can place your server anywhere in the topology. It is not necessary for all user traffic to the internet to be routed through the server.
With small-scale deployments (less than 25 Users) I typically just put the server on the same switch and subnet as the users.

Create a local wireless without internet

I would like to create a local wireless without internet.
I would like to have the possibility to connect 50 clients and access to a website using a domain name.
That means, I need a DNS and DHCP.
I sreach on internet an I found a way to achieve that but not totally and i am not sure if it will work and if it is the best way to achieve that.
I can maybe have a mini PC (server) with ad hoc network and have the client to connect on the server but:
Will it be possible on a connection to assign a ip to the client and set a DNS server ip on the client as the same ip of the server.
I found mini PCs but how can I know if the PC will handle a lot of client ? Which network card to choose ?
I think also that a router and configure DHCP on it to distribute the IPs but I would like to have one box ready object as a mini PC.
I need an advice on the best way to go with what i want to achieve and materials i need to buy and good references.
For a linux domain controler you will need to install bind to host your own DNS. It's a little involved to set up, but necessary if your network doesn't have a DNS server. If you're using a windows domain controller you will need a server OS (expensive). If you only have 50 clients the DNS resources needed will be small and you could run bind from any old box, even a Raspberry Pi. You will also need a host machine for the "website" a.k.a. an intranet. This can be the same machine as your DNS server, but can be any computer on the network. When all is done you will have your router configured with the IP of your local DNS server. The DNS server will point your local domain to whatever box hosts the intranet website.

Networking: How do wifi enabled IoT products allow remote access?

I have been looking for an answer to this problem, but I cannot find what I am looking for. I think, perhaps, it is because I lack the knowledge to ask the question in meaningful way.
I have been learning a lot about remote access to devices at home. I know that ISP's change public IP addresses regularly (dynamic IP address). I know that to get around this, one could use a service like "no-ip", etc. Or one could get a static IP address.
What I do not understand is how some of the latest home automation devices are able to be controlled remotely without use of a static IP, or a service like "no-ip". For example, a wifi enabled thermostat, or lighting system.
If the device had a built in server, or client, then I assume that the device could connect to an outside server in a remote location. The user could then also log into that server and send commands to the device. What I don't understand is how commands sent to the device from a cell phone, for example, can reach the home device. Presumably the off site location of the server would have to know the public IP address where the devise is located, and then port-forwarding would have to be set up to allow access to the device.
What am I missing here? Is it possible to create a homemade wifi enabled thermostat, webcam, or other device without using port-forwarding, no-ip, or a static IP?
Well, there are several ways to bypass the inbound connection constraint of NAT protocol. Such as:
A virtual adapter on the device configured to a VPN server that has an inbound port open ready to transfer data. Various open source solutions such as openVPN are considered as great examples for this service over IOT boards like Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone, etc. These are used as gateways often. Further, they communicate with the microcontrollers over popular IOT protocols such as MQTT, COAP, etc.
Another solution is to create a port forwarding tunnel, since the router won't block the outbound connection. There are various tunneling services that are availble such as localtunnel, ngrok, etc. You could also use a cloud server that has a public IP such as AWS, DigitalOcean, etc. Again as above mentioned point, they can be implemented in the gateways.
Some devices "phone home" to a server so that there are ports open between them and the servers, and the mobile apps just contact the servers. This is the same way your web browser can receive web pages from a web server. If you have a NAT router, the router must open a port from the inside device to the outside server. This is maintained in a NAT table with expiration timers for UDP and session monitoring for TCP.

Obtaining MAC address

According to Obtain client MAC address in ASP.NET Application, it is not possible. I am not entirely convinced because whenever I connect to Tim Hortons WiFi, my MAC address is known.
Occasionally, the network is slow and I see this URL like this before being redirected to the Connect page:
http://timhortonswifi.com/cp/tdl3/index.asp
?cmd=login
&switchip=172.30.129.73
&mac=60:6c:66:17:1a:83
&ip=10.40.66.229
&essid=Tim%20Hortons%20WiFi
&apname=TDL-ON-NEP-02177-WAP1
&apgroup=02177
&url=http%3A%2F%2Fweather%2Egc%2Eca%2Fcity%2Fpages%2Fon-72_metric_e%2Ehtml
So according to this URL, the site knows the IP address of the router, my MAC address, the IP address assigned to my device by the router, the network SSID, some other pieces of information, and the URL I was trying to access prior to connecting.
There's two options: Tim Hortons WiFi Basic and Tim Hortons WiFi Plus, where the "Plus" option allows me to connect to any Tim Hortons WiFi access point in Canada automatically with this device. Registration requires an email address, so I'm assuming this is possible by checking the MAC address and storing it in a database that routers ping upon connection. More info here.
According to the extension of this page, I can safely assume it is ASP. How are they obtaining this information?
When your client traffic reaches the first router, that router will route the traffic to the adecuated port, changing the response MAC address with its own MAC address so the answer will be routed to it. And this will happen for each of the routers the packets travel by. So, at the end, the web server will only see the MAC address of the last router where the answer will be sent to be routed back to the previous roter, and this process repeated until the answer reaches the client.
No, there is not way to obtain the MAC address of client from server side.
But, what you are seeing is a client sending its information to a server. So, the answer can be converted into "how can i obtain my local mac address and send it to the server?".
Browsers do not allow to read this information. Some properly signed/configured ActiveX or Java applets can do it, but they can be blocked, or you can have some device that will not execute java nor activex, so it is not a reliable way of doing it.
In the case in your post, the easiest way of doing it is configuring the wifi access point dhcp or dns server to serve a proxy configuration file that will allow to configure a redirection to the desired web server, redirection that has been created inside the access point, which have all the shown information in your post.

Setting up local wireless server using WAMP

My goal is to have two laptops in a network. One is acting as a server, serving webpages to the other. The catch here is that neither is connected to the outside internet.
What I have done so far is setup WAMP on the server laptop, and it successfully serves web pages on localhost. Now I want to access these pages on the other laptop.
To do this, I had the server create an ad-hoc network and connected the other laptop to it, but I'm stuck - and I'm worried I'm not on the right track. I followed this tutorial but in the end I figured out that just explained how to spoof a text URL as an IP address, and not really what I was looking for.
So I guess I have two questions:
Is my method the best way to do this (with ad-hoc networks)? Is there some way to connect a laptop to a wireless router and have the laptop act as a server to another laptop?
If my WAMP and ad-hoc network should work, how do I connect other laptops to my server through the ad-hoc network?
Thanks!
I would suggest the first option: get a wifi router. Then you can assign static IP adresses from the routers private network or use DHCP server on the router. Hopefully you will have an option to reserve IP adresses on DHCP server so you dont have to check every time what IP adress the laptop acting as a server got. You use this address to access your web server. Also, you can use this router later as a gateway to the internet if you want.
In ad hoc mode you will probably get an address from 169.254.0.0/16 link-local scope, and you can check it by running ipconfig as #Robadob already suggested.
On your hosting laptop open cmd and call ipconfig look for the internal IP address on the network interface your hosting the ad-hoc network.
Enter that IP address into the browser on your client laptops web browser instead of localhost.
If that doesn't work, try other ip addresses listed by ipconfig (incase you used the wrong) and then check the properties of your ad-hoc network, windows firewall and any other firewall software to disable anything that might be blocking it.
An ad-hoc network is suitable option for what your doing, most people would probably use a switch or router though, however that requires hardware you probably don't have.

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