Offline files staying offline over VPN connection

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Guest

We have remote users who can successfully create their offline cache and work
offline without any problems. When they then connect over the VPN (Cisco VPN
which requires you login before launching the connection), they appear to be
working ok. However, saving files can take over 30 seconds even for small
files.

The real problem occurs when, at some point, the Windows XP SP2 laptop goes
'offline' in terms of synchronization. The VPN connection is still up and
servers are pingable, etc, but the bubble pops up saying you are working
offline. You can then force a synchronization but then the file you were
working on appears to be in conflict with a network file which is the file
name plus some hexidecimal string such as 1C6B00. The synchronization then
throws an error about the dfs location no longer being available and
prompting the user for credentials.

This does not happen when wired on the network nor does it happen for
everyone. Does anyone have a starting point for me on this? I have looked
at the event logs on the DFS servers and there is nothing related. The event
logs on the machine don't log any relevant errors either.

The only thing that has changed recently is the extension of the schema for
R2 components. I have not migrated to DFSR.

This initially began with explorer hanging and we upgraded our VPN client
which eliminated that problem, but now we have the hexidecimal, going
offline for no reason problem.

I don't know what other tools to troubleshoot this problem. It seems to be
connectivity, but is it related to how offline files work over a VPN
connection or is it related to the actual connection or VPN client and the
offline file problem is just a symptom.

Thanks in advance!!
 
We have a similar issue that when the user is offline and connects via the
VPN, the system says the server is available to reconnect, but when you try
to do so, it says the network name is not available.

I can connect to the server using the FQDN as well as the IP, but just using
\\servername\share which is how the home folder is mapped, it will not
reconnect.

Clients are XP SP2. users not using offline files are able to connect just
fine.

Would love to find a fix.
 
What we discovered is that it was an issue with the MTU size configured for
our VPN and using offline files. The default size was 1500 but 1300 appeared
to solve the problem. I don't know what VPN software you are using, but we
are using Cisco and it made a big difference for us. Apparently there was a
fragmentation problem when the MTU was set too high.
 
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