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We are connecting a server to our network via VPN (Client-Gateway). Is it possible to maintain the external IP address while the VPN is connected? Of course once we connect via VPN, the server stop responding to the external IP address and only responds to the internal IP.

For example: Our Original IP: 205.166.255.123 Our VPN IP: 192.168.2.1 We would like to be able to still connect to 205.166.255.123. Is this possible, even with multiple IP addresses assigned to the server?

The purpose is that this server is a webserver, but will also need internal network access. The location of this server is external and we can only connect via the windows vpn set-up at t

Our Environment: Windows 2008

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you should write some more data to this, be more specific what kind of network topology are you talking about, see my answer below. Who is the one who initiates the VPN? Or is it a site to site VPN? Are you connecting to the VPN from your network to access the web server internally or is the web server connecting to a VPN server in your network? – Alen Sep 19 '12 at 23:07
I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. I've never heard of any cases where after a VPN connect then it'll loose access to primary address. Just make sure your VPN isn't telling the system to tunnel all traffic through the vpn. In OpenVPN this setting is called "redirect-gateway" openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/… – Robert Sep 25 '12 at 23:02

1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote

Not sure about your network topology so I'll answer for the scenario as I understood it from your question

Scenario: The Server (windows 2008) has a public IP (or is mapped to it) 205.166.255.123, dials a VPN connection to your network and then gets an IP 192.168.2.1. You from your network want to access the server on a public IP but can't.

The problem is probable that the server has the vpn connection as the default gateway (so all traffic gets sent from a private 192.168.2.1 IP, with no NAT to public address, which then creates a problem because you get answered by the private IP to a request that should be answered from a public ip.

In this case you need to remove VPN connection as the default gateway or set up a static route for your network public IP on a server through the servers public interface.

Could you say exactly what kind of VPN are you talking about, a dial-up VPN (if it is, what kind of VPN and what client software) from the Windows server as i described, or is it a site-to-site VPN or a dialup VPN that gets initiated from you network to the Windows Server with 205.166.255.123 IP

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You understood my scenario exactly. Our server is connected via dial-up VPN and we are using the default Windows 2008 VPN application. We removed the VPN connection from being used as the default gateway. This now allows us to connect from the external IP while connected to the VPN. However, the issue seems that we cannot ping the internal computers. Do you think this might be a DNS issue? – Sean Sep 20 '12 at 1:14
did you try pinging by name and IP address of internal computers, if it works by IP and not name, then it is a DNS issue, if it doesn't work at all then it is a routing issue, open cmd and do "route print" command both before starting the VPN on server and after you connect the VPN to see which routes you get when the VPN gets started. Also you can try putting the static route to your internal network with "route add -p 192.168.x.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.2.1" where 192.168.x.0 is your internal network you connect to with VPN – Alen Sep 20 '12 at 5:06
That was it. Your route command resolved my issue as far being able to contact the new serer. Thank you. – Sean Sep 21 '12 at 1:00

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