Comments on: Network/VPN/exchange Windows Server 2003

By: petkoa

petkoa — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:38:47 +0000

HI,

You got some answers about public domain and VPN – now some about public/private IPs. You shouldn’t have same IP ranges on the outer and inner network interfaces – it’s not impossible, but it is bad thing and sure can cause a lot of problems. So, if your ISP sets your WAN (outer) IP to, say, 192.168.0.1/(32/31/…/24, whatever), you set your LAN (inner) IP to, say 192.168.100.1/24 and set your DHCP server – or your LAN static IPs accordingly.

If your outer IP is from the private range (10.0.x.x, 192.168.x.x, etc), and your ISP is taking care of NAT and DNS, you can use external mails (yahoo, gmail, etc.), and as well any external services with clients on your local LAN. However, if you want some services residing on your LAN to be accessible from the internet (VPN including), you’ll need an IP from the real range, preferably static with a domain name attached and appropriate DNS (as already said by ITAddict). Domain and DNS are not obligatory – but if your real IP is not static, better use some Dynamic DNS service.

BR,

Petko

By: rgunther

rgunther — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:04:42 +0000

The VPN portion of your question, you would need a device that can handle VPN connections. Many home routers now are able to do VPN connections, if not you would have to setup a linux computer to be able to take vpn connections or get a device that can. Another issue I THINK you might have, is that you probably have a dynamic public IP address. This would make things difficult for you, so if you can get a static public IP.

Ryan Gunther
http://www.onlinetech.com

By: itaddict

itaddict — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:36:37 +0000

You need a public domain with MX records. You have already invested the money in your mail server. A public domain is the smallest cost of all.