Strange DNS behavior with SecureClient

[scsummers]

Symptom:

User can establish a VPN connection but finds that they cannot access their mail server.

Pinging the server by name returns an IP address of 0.0.0.1. Pinging the IP address is successful.

This does not happen for every server and the servers vary from user to user so DNS does seem to be working. It does not occur with every user.

We have tried flushing the DNS cache.

Subsequent connections may/may not exhibit the problem.

Any troubleshooting ideas? Checkpoints Knowledge Base did not have any good info.

[chillyjim]

If the client does an "nslookup" is he hitting the correct Nameserver?

[tdvit]

have you checked the local host file.... you never know... also make sure off line files is not enabled

[scsummers]

Thanks for the tip on NSLOOKUP.

No host entries here; I checked and also users are running in Least-Privileged-User mode so they cannot edit the file.

Just in case NSLOOKUP does generate an error when trying to resolve the server name where would you suggest looking next?

[Lackie]

In your secure client rulebase, are you allowing the client to access their DNS server? Are you allowing DNS from the client?

[Sergej]

Are you using OfficeMode?
If not make sure all the VPN users statically configured with you internal DNS server.

[scsummers]

Thanks for the replies. We do use office mode mostly but there are times when we must use Visitor Mode due to the config of the hotel/hotspot vendor system.

Most of the clients are XP SP2; I have heard there may be a hotfix available as there have been problems where if a primary DNS server is not working it will not roll over to the secondary.

I am checking into that now.