Originally Posted by
star_world
Let me recap what you're saying here, as it's slightly confusing. First of all, the actual direction of the VPN usually doesn't matter - it's just a way of encrypting the traffic between the two networks.
Some questions / observations:
- Home computer is sitting on a privately-addressed LAN, behind a Linksys VPN router. Subnet will be 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x or similar.
Correct.
- The Linksys VPN router initiates an IPSec VPN connection to... what? A VPN router at your office? A firewall? The office PC directly?
No. Right now, my office computer initiates an IPSEC VPN connection to my Linksys VPN router. I can also initiate an SSL VPN connection from any computer on my home LAN to our office router. These are two separate and unrelated connections.
- If you're at home, with the VPN connected, can you reach devices on your office LAN? Servers / printers / your work PC?
When I'm at home with the home-to-office VPN connection active, I can reach my office LAN and the computer I need to hit (at least with respect to VNC -- I haven't tried hitting its drives). My question, however, is whether my office computer can, using the home-to-office VPN connection, only, reach computers on my home LAN.
If so, the connection will work in both directions. If you can reach some but not others, is there a firewall enabled on any of the PCs?
Configuration of the relevant computers isn't an issue. I understand firewalls well.
Also, try to see if you can "see" the other computer by its IP address, rather than hostname. Eg: Start / Run and then type \\x.x.x.x where the Xs are the IP address of the computer you're trying to reach.
The problem is, to do that I would have to take down my ipsec VPN connection (office-to-home), and I need it maintained if the home-to-office connection won't permit my office machine to see the computers on my home LAN.
- You have a shared drive on your work PC that has files / folders that you need to be able to access from home.
No. I have a dedicated computer (a thin client) that acts as a mini-file server (and a few other things). I use sync software to mirror some of its folders to my home file server so I have a full backup of various datat that is maintained off-site.
- You have some sync software (what software?)
GoodSync.
running on the office PC. What does this do? Is it proactively trying to replicate the shared folder on your work PC with shared folders that it can see elsewhere (ie: your home PC)?
It is synchronizing a set of folders containing data that is important enough that I want it backed up offsite and, in the event of a communications failure, accessible both in my office and at home.
See if you can answer these - it will help a lot to figure out what's going on.
Done. Thanks.