VPN tunnel across web proxy, NAT and firewall - no kidding !!

I am sure at times you might have faced this problem where PPTP or L2TP based VPN connection does not go through. This may be in some hotel or when you are visiting a customer or partner site etc. This is primarily due to PPTP GRE port blocking or L2TP ESP port blocking issue by some firewall or NAT router in your path between client to server.

And definitely this thought would have gone past your mind - "why IP based VPN connections cannot provide a ubiqutous connectivity - similar to web access given by my IE". But guess what - pretty soon your wish-list will be granted :)

In Vista SP1 and Longhorn Server release, we are adding a new form of VPN tunnel called as SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol).

This will allow VPN tunnel connectivity across any scenarios i.e. behind NAT routers or firewalls or web proxies. And the best part of it - your end user remote access experience (like using RAS dialer) and network administration experience (like using RRAS server) remains same as before. i.e. SSTP based VPN tunnel just acts as a one more VPN tunnel that gets plugged into MS VPN client and VPN servers.

This will be first available as a beta release along with Vista SP1 beta and Longhorn server RC0. If you are interested in trying out beta release, let me know. We would love to see you selfhosting our beta image and providing your valuable feedback.

Stay tuned for more information and please feel free to share your thoughts

Samir Jain
Lead Program Manager (samirj@online.microsoft.com **)
RRAS, Windows Enterprise Networking

** Remove the "online" to actually email me

[This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.]