Pressed into service - help!

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roadshow41

n00b
Joined
Jul 26, 2007
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I'm way underqualified to be doing what I am trying to do, so I'm hoping some generous soul will take pity on me and help me out!

I'm being pressed into service helping my father in laws business. His IT manager was fired for ineffectiveness, incompetance, and insubordination (or so I am told) and since I'm the closest thing to a tech he knows, i'm the guy he's pushing for help. I know just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to get the job done.

Here's my dilemma:

There is WAY to much hardware here for what needs done, I'm working with a Dell PowerEdge 2600 that I think is serving the company website through a cable modem (not a very good idea, I know, but I can't figure out anything else) as well as serving about 15 workstations (mostly laptops) at the office.

The cable modem is routed through a dlink wireless router (back to the server) then to a netgear portal and then to a samsung switch. I can't figure out why they would have ever been set up this way, but I'm having to work with what's here since I'm not experienced enough to completely rewire the network.

I have two priorities.

First, they are using MS CRM, and I need to be able to access that remotely. I can't find the correct IP address to log into the server for access. I have a couple of computers that this was done with before, but they are not working now. The corporate website has a login and when it was working the employees could access the CRM through the website. I'm not sure how, but something is broken in that process now, and no one can get web access. I can get them in locally, but not remotely.

I also need to configure access for another office to this local server. I planned on using a vpn or rdp, but the port forwarding is a real issue. The tangle of wires is incredible here, so I'm posting some pics for reference.

Someone, anyone, take pity on me and hold my hand through this!!!

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What I don't understand is why you have that small Netgear switch and other LAN cables plugged in to it, you would just need one router and then a LAN cable going from it to the main switch under the patch panel, and then all other cables on the main switch. Then you can get rid of one of those routers.

What is your issue on portforwarding?
 
^^I'm his brother, and we had the same question. This was setup by someone who can no longer be reached (I believe, please correct me if I'm wrong); and even with our limited networking knowledge, it all just looks wrong.

He's about to post an update with some more info. Thanks for checking it out.
 
Okay ... I've learned a little in the last couple of hours.

The Samsung switch is actually the phone system, and acts as the PBX. There are a couple of cables plugged into it coming out of the routers to hard wire in 3 computers. The only real issues here now are dlink wireless router and the netgear switch.

As far as port forwarding goes, the only port that I know for sure is the port for the CRM and thats 5555.

I'm slowly learning here ... thanks for being patient.
 
I would go to http://portforward.com/ and look up how to portforward on your router.
Then the port for CRM can be found in the IIS management panel.
Ports for VPN are: 1723, 47

To setup VPN on the server you can go to Routing and Remote Access and setup VPN under that control panel, that is if you are running Windows Server.
 
Port forwarding is generally simple depending on the router.

If this could be drawn out in a diagram, it would help to see what's going on.
 
Forwarding is simple, I think he's really looking more for information on how to properly configure the VPN for local and remote access.

When it comes to desktop, we're both competent; this is just something we've never really dealt with.
 
No problem with the help though I will need to know the following info:

- Complete list of equipment, make and model (some is displayed but not all)
- What is connected to what and which port
- Firmware versions of each device
- Pics of each if you can
 
Comcast cable modem smc8013wg
dlink dir-635 v1.09 firmware
netgear fs105 switch
dell poweredge 2600 server
windows server 2003 sbs sp1

Let me redefine what I need in more direct terms. I need to get a computer signed in to the this server from another office location. All of my computers locally work just fine and can access my server files as well as the internet.

The daisy chain goes from the cable modem to the dlink wifi router. 1 hardwire channel goes to the server, another goes to the netgear switch (which is then routed back to the dlink and to 2 other hardwire computers), and 2 others go to hardwired computers.

There are 2 virtual servers assigned in the dlink one for my CRM and one for a mail server that I don't think they ever set up.

Somewhere in all this mess, they used to be able to access the CRM from a secure website, but that is broken at the moment.

There is no obvious firewall software on the server.
 
roadshow41 said:
another goes to the netgear switch (which is then routed back to the dlink and to 2 other hardwire computers)
Click to expand...
Are you saying there is two cables connecting the Dlink router and the Netgear switch? If you are, that's bad, you shouldn't do that, it will create packet collisions, and confuse the heck out of the router and switch.
 
I think one is an uplink from the switch. It's in the 5th jack and there is an uplink dip ticked.

I'm beginning to sort some of this out in my head, so hopefully I'll have some things resolved today.

Here are a couple of additional thoughts. The previous guy seems to have purchased a dns for the server. I'm guessing he didn't think to buy a static ip from comcast, and I really don't know much about that either. But finding that ip might have been one of the keys to this puzzle?
 
You have a small thumb :rolleyes:

Should look at routing here, I redid most of it, still looks like crap. However, I would rewire everything.
 
ivan_gromov said:
You have a small thumb :rolleyes:

Should look at routing here, I redid most of it, still looks like crap. However, I would rewire everything.
Click to expand...

Agreed. It looks like a big mess that's best served by starting over. It looks like one of those throw more money at it til it works and leave it along type of jobs.
 
howie_23 said:
Agreed. It looks like a big mess that's best served by starting over. It looks like one of those throw more money at it til it works and leave it along type of jobs.
Click to expand...

You just can't do that in modern business. You don't tell lawyers that are billing out $300/hour that their network and phones are down for upgrades. If they are working your system better be working or you won't be working.
 
Trepidati0n said:
You just can't do that in modern business. You don't tell lawyers that are billing out $300/hour that their network and phones are down for upgrades. If they are working your system better be working or you won't be working.
Click to expand...

I agree, but I also agree that it should be done with a battleplan in mind so that way the downtime is very short.
 
In the good news bad news category, I've fixed a bunch of my problems, but still have some left.

Big problem #1 was that my static IP was not assigned correctly to my modem. It was dynamic and that was creating a BUNCH of the problems. Got that squared away, and now I think I can move forward.

I tidied up some of the cabling, and now it's reasonably organized so that I can see what is what.

I made the modem a pass through and set up the static ip in the d link router, so everything is working correctly now up to that point.

My next step is getting a VPN set up from the other office. Hopefully that's cake now that everything else is lined out.

Once that's done, I can begin working on the dotnetnuke website that was setup ... really not sure I like this, never used it before, but i'm going to give it a chance before i chuck it.
 
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