Comments on: Windows Deployment Services trumps Internet Connection Sharing

By: Tristan Watkins

Tristan Watkins — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:46:00 +0000

I think this will work for you if you just share from the VPN adapter when the VPN is connected. So:

-disable ICS on your internet connection
-establish the VPN connection
-share the connection from the VPN adapter

To share when the VPN is disconnected:

-unshare the VPN connection
-disconnect the VPN
-reshare the internet connection

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Tristan

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:01:19 +0000

Yes, I think so.
To be more clear the computer in question is:
1. Running ICS (that is, acting as the host to allow other PCs access to the internet)
2. Connecting to a VPN using the built in VPN adapter in Windows 7.
3. VPN is now configured to not use DNS.
4. Using the default ICS settings. (I’m not actually sure how ports are opened/closed in ICS in Win7)

However I spoke too soon about it working. The VPN connection still fails, but instead of failing immediately, it fails at seemingly random intervals, so now it’s usable but unreliable. The VPN connection works fine from other PCs that do not have ICS enabled, including (somewhat ironically) PCs that are connected to the internet via the host PC, even with DNS enabled on the VPN connection.

Again to be clear:
Computer A – Host computer running ICS
Computer B – Client computer running VPN

In this configuration, computer B is able to establish a connection over the VPN without any problems, even though Computer B is connected to the internet via Computer A.

So whatever is happening is a compatibility problem between running VPN and ICS on the same computer, not necessarily a problem with running them on the same connection, if that helps at all…

By: Tristan Watkins

Tristan Watkins — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:00:02 +0000

Interesting. Do I understand correctly that you disabled DNS on the ICS recipient machine’s VPN adapter? Were all ports open over ICS?

By: Jay

Jay — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 05:15:57 +0000

Thanks for posting this. I just ran into an issue connecting to my VPN on a computer with ICS enabled. Disabling ICS wasn’t an option, but thanks to the info found here I figured out that disabling DNS for the VPN resolves the issue. Not ideal, but at least I can connect! (side note: hardcoding DNS and bypassing DHCP isn’t enough, surprisingly)