Providing access to a Samba server for VPN clients
- by Kamil Kisiel
We have some Windows users that connect to our network via VPN from home. They need to be able to connect to our Samba server and access a mapped network drive just as they do as when they are on our LAN.
The complication is that VPN clients are placed on a subnet other than our office LAN, and behind a firewall. What's the easiest way for me to allow them to still connect to the network share?
The solutions I've currently seen involve setting up a WINS server for name resolution purposes and then tunnelling a bunch of the NetBIOS stuff through the firewall. However that means I'd have to set up the VPN DHCP server to hand out the WINS address, something I'm not even sure is possible on the Cisco hardware we have. I'm thinking there must be an easier way. Should I use an LMHOSTS file? Or just map by IP address?
Also, I'm not terribly familiar with Windows networking, so which ports would I need to pass through my firewall in order to get the file sharing through?