For the occasional support of my network I use a PPTP VPN.
This VPN terminates at windows 2003 server running RRAS. It all works fine except for this strange issue.
When I connect to the server via PPTP, an IP address is assigned to the PPTP connection at the server. This IP address gets automatically added to DNS, So the server will have 2 IP addresses.
I also have some drives mapped to that server.
For clarity:
server name: main
static IP of main: 192.168.1.3
When I PPTP in, MAIN gets assigned another IP address in DNS. So, if I look in DNS I may see main in there twice, once with IP 192.168.1.3 and another with (for example) 192.168.1.222
I have a drive mapped to main as well, for example h: \\main\share
What sometimes happens is that access to that mapped drive fails. When I look into the issue and for example just do a ping to main, it will return the PPTP address of 192.168.1.22 instead of 192.168.1.3.
If I clear that IP in DNS and then flush dns at the workstation, then ping will return to 192.168.1.3 and everything works as it should.
My question is why is this happening and what can I do to prevent it? I understand that the PPTP connection will be assigned an address, but why is it being added to DNS and then superceding the address I need it to be?
And what can I do to stop it from happening?