Laptop users

[ghost807]

we have serveral laptops that travel outside the company and would like to use outlook to connect to scalix and download their email so they can use them offline.
Our service men with the laptops are out of the office for weeks at a time and having the ability to do that is neccessary.
Ive been looking at the posts and also the install manual and i know which ports are supposed to be open on the scalix server.

currently we have a linksys router that is also providing the port forwarding and firewall protection

Scalix connect is setup using the ip address of the linksys router.
port 5729 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24
port 5757 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24
port 389 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24
port 80 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24
port 443 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24
port 25 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24
port 749 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24
port 88 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24
port 110 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24
port 143 is forwarded to 192.168.1.24

Outlook gives an error everytime we try to connect to scalix through the linksys router.

Code: Select all

unable to communicate with the scalix server because of an error on the network. If the problem persists, check your network connection.

Details
UAL Netowrk Error:
Failed to resolve server name.
Host not found

Connection Type: Windows Sockets


any thoughts on what i'm doing wrong.

every other aspect of scalix is working correctly now.

if anyone would like to login to try to assist me in testing PM me and i will give you a username and password as well as the ip address.
thanx
Dave

[mephisto]

You also need to let ICMP (ping) packets through. BTW: this plethora of ports is not necessary for just Outlook access and could lead to security problems.

[ghost807]

Which ports specifically does Scalix connector need to work?

[mephisto]

5729 on TCP and 5757 on UDP. Plus the mentioned ICMP packages.

[ghost807]

I have something working but i know there's got to be a better way.
i currently have suse on a dmz using a wrv54g linksys router.
i have to have the scalix ports open 5757,5729 and also the icmp in the suse firewall.
if i change the linksys from dmz to opening these ports and also allow anon internet reqests outlook will give me the same error.

i talked to linksys and they said there must be a different port that needs to be opened and i also agree but i am unable to find what that might be.
i downloaded zone alarm but was unable to find out what additional items were needed.

i checked the firmware on the linksys router and that is the most current version.

i'm not too comfortable with leaving the suse box on the dmz but if that's the only way then i guess i must.


i do have one other question not completely related but hopefully you can answer this one as well.
does scalix connect work with windows 98 se with outlook 2000 installed?

[mephisto]

There is this wonderful site I stumbled over a while ago. It's called google or something. You should try that sometimes ...
http://www.scalix.com/documents/RELEASE_NOTES_10.0.0.html

[ghost807]

Sorry that never came up in my google searches most of what i had read talked about outlook versions, not os.
i still am not able to explain why scalix doesn't respond when i turn off the dmz here are some screen shots.

ports opened
http://www.systemsequipment.com/images/ ... ttings.bmp

ping requests open
http://www.systemsequipment.com/images/ping.bmp


with dmz
http://www.systemsequipment.com/images/dmz.bmp

[ScalixSupport]

Your error message says it all. The laptop cannot resolve the server name. In your case the laptop has to resolve the name assigned to your router by your isp. What is that? Do you have a static ip address?

What happens if outside your network, you

telnet router_name 5729

or

telnet ip_address_of_router 5729

?

Do you see something similar to this returned?

Code: Select all

Connected to machine.domain.com (10.10.10.10).
Escape character is '^]'.
☻∟50∟♥

[ghost807]

i do have a static ip address (i'll pm that to you) and i am able to telnet to that address.
i do receive the exact message as you do on that port

when do a telnet to 5757 i receive an error message connection refused.

thanx for your assistance
dave

[mephisto]

Scalix does only listen to UDP packages on 5757 - telnet is using TCP. If you open Tools / Scalix-Properties in Outlook (inside your net), what server name do you see there? If you try to resolve this adress from outside your net, does this work?

What you need is an internal nameserver (dns) that resolves your external server name (e.g. mail.mydomain.com) to an internal IP (e.g 192.168.0.5). At the same time you need to register this servername to your (router's) external IP with your web provider, so external users can resolve the adress to your external IP.

[ghost807]

i have the ip address of the router as the server name(no resolution should be needed)

the router forwards the requested ports to the scalix server
the dns server is configured correctly.
the internal ip address is 192.168.1.24 (see previous post)

[mephisto]

I learned this after working with Scalix for a few months: DNS is essential - don't use IP adresses.

[ScalixSupport]

Let me back up and say that using outlook/scalix connect to access your scalix mailbox remotely is not recommended. Performance will be less than acceptible. While it is true you can use offline sync with 10 I don't recommend it in your case.

We will be releasing 11 with smartcache to improve performance with WAN connections but you will still need to resolve your DNS issues.

I see you have webmail open on your ip address. I recommend having your remote workers use that. Alternatively you may have better luck with imap or pop.

Regards,
Don

[ghost807]

it gets worse then.

my internet domain name is syseqco.local

my email is systemsequipment.com

my email host is not my isp provider and my ip address does not resolve to any name.

i assumed that using the ip of the router would work correctly for the laptop users.

[mephisto]

No, you both need DNS lookups and reverse DNS lookups. Register a subdomain with your ISP (eg mail.systemsequipment.com) with your external IP and tell your DSL provider to register a reverse lookup for this IP to mail.systemsequipment.com in their DNS. Then make your internal resolve mail.systemsequipment.com to your internal IP and also your internal IP to mail.systemsequipment.com
Trust me, this is the only way.