VPN in Microsoft Server 2003

The full form of VPN is Virtual Private Network. VPN gives extremely secure connections between private networks linked through the Internet. It allows remote computers to act as though they were on the same secure, local network. Allows you to be at home and access your company's computers in the same way as if you were sitting at work.

Almost impossible for someone to tap or interfere with data in the VPN tunnel. If you have VPN client software on a laptop, you can connect to your company from anywhere in the world. VPN goes between a computer and a network (client-to-server), or a LAN and a network using two routers (server-to-server). Each end of the connection is a VPN "endpoint", the connection between them is a "VPN tunnel".

When one end is a client, it means that computer is running VPN client software. You can use a virtual private network (VPN) to connect components to one network by using another network. VPN do this by "tunneling" through the Internet or another public network. With a VPN, connections across the public network can transfer data by using the routing infrastructure of the Internet, but to the user, the data seems to travel over a dedicated private link.

A VPN gives you the benefit of a dial-up connection to a dial-up server, plus the flexibility of an Internet connection. Using an Internet connection you can connect to resources all over the world. If you have a high-speed Internet connection at your computer and at your office, you can communicate with your office at full Internet speed. This is much faster than any dial-up connection that uses an analog modem.

VPNs use authenticated links to make sure that only authorized users can connect to your network, and they use encryption to make sure that others cannot intercept and cannot use data over the Internet. A Tunneling Protocol is a technology that helps make the transfer of information over the Internet more secure from one computer to another.

VPN technology also permits a corporation to connect to its branch offices or to other companies over a public network, such as the Internet, while helping to maintain secure communications. The VPN connection across the Internet logically operates as a dedicated wide area network (WAN) link.

VPN in Windows 2003 Server: You need a high speed Internet connection to configure and run VPN server. Two individual lan card must be present in a single system where you want to configure a VPN Server. The lan cards should ping each other. Also need a User which's Dial in allow access should be enable. Microsoft 2003 server two tunnelling protocols for a secure VPN connection, one is PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol) which Provides data encryption using Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption. The other is L2TP (Layer Two Tunnelling Protocol) which Provides data encryption, authentication, and integrity using IPSec.

Steps to create VPN Server in 2003 Server: At first I go to Start and point to Administrative Tools, then click Routing and Remote Access. Then I click the server icon that matches the local server name in the left panel of the console. If the Routing and Remote Access service was previously turn on, you may want to reconfigure the server.

To reconfigure the server Right-click the server object, and then click Disable Routing and Remote Access. Click yes to continue when you are prompted with an informational message. Then Right-click the server icon and then click configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access to start the Routing and Remote Access Server Setup Wizard. After that click Remote access (dial-up or VPN) to turn on remote computers to dial in or connect to this network through the Internet. Then I have Click to select VPN. In the VPN Connection window I click the network interface (Lan) which is connected to the Internet and go the IP Address Assignment window, then I click Automatically because there was present a DHCP server in network. However, if DHCP is not available, you must specify a range of static addresses.

If you use from a specified range of addresses, open the Address Range Assignment dialog box and Type the first IP address in the range of addresses that you want to use in the Start IP address box. Type the last IP address in the range in the End IP address box. Windows calculates the number of addresses automatically. After that I have accept the default setting of No, use Routing and Remote Access to authenticate connection request and finally Click Finish to turn on the Routing and Remote Access service and to configure the server as a Remote Access server.
For the remote access server to forward traffic properly inside your network, you must configure it as a router with either static routes or routing protocols, so that all of the locations in the intranet are reachable from the remote access server. It also need for security purpose.