OK this one is a technology puzzle… if you don’t like the techno babble tune out now and come back after the next post.
So about a month ago we got a new VPN appliance at work and for “security” reasons we don’t use a client less model for hooking into the vpn… it’s not a secure https connection it’s called a “smart tunnel” and works with either a active x control or a java applet. The general concept is you put in your credentials into the website which authenticates you in and starts the “smart tunnel” and then you can launch a approved application for connecting in.. In this case the approved application is Remote Desktop Connection.
That is how it is supposed to work, and it does work well in a Windows 32 bit environment. If your using Mac OS X or 64 bit Windows your screwed. And that is not the point of this post it’s a technical limitation of the device the vendor has not addressed but could be taken care of by the usage of a vpn client… oh wait we can’t use those for “security” reasons.
So since my two main OS of choice at home are Mac OS X and Vista 64 (in that order) I’ve been trying to figure out a way around all of this. My current best method is to use my work laptop (XP 32 bit) as a “gateway” I remote desktop to it and then from there jump to work. Now this works mostly ok, it’s not very elegant and if I leave my laptop at work I’m screwed. So as a direct result I’ve been trying to come up with a better method.
I landed on the idea of using VMWare Fusion w/ my Mac this morning.
I’m using OS 10.5.6 running vmware 2.0.2 and XP 32 SP3 is the guest OS.
Now here is the weird part when I try to initiate a connection in “Unity” mode the “smart tunnel” hooks up or looks like it hooks up per usual and then the Remote Desktop Connection times out on me. When I do the connection in it’s own dedicated window I have no problems!
Explain that one to me… unity mode is running on a VM in the background it just has the window hidden. For as far as I can tell it’s using all of the same virtual interfaces. It just seems odd to me.