Knowledgebase: WinGate 6
Stopping spontaneous dialling by WinGate
Posted by Adrien de Croy (Import) on 30 January 2004 04:17 PM
Due to several factors the WinGate Server may initiate the dialup connection that is used for Internet access when there is no visible or noticeable client activity in GateKeeper.

There are several factors that can influence this type of behaviour:

The first is the way that Operating System features are configured on the WinGate server:

File and Printer Sharing

Although not seen as often in the latest version of WinGate when it is running on Windows 9x machines, an issue can occur with File and Printer sharing when it has been configured to bind to the TCP/IP protocol.

Because of the way the Windows handles the advertising of shared resources across a TCP/IP network this can cause spurious dialling requests on Win9x systems.

Remedy

To fix this you need to access the properties of the Network Neighbourhood. This can be done by either right clicking on the Network Neighbourhood icon on the desktop, or via the Network Settings icon in the control panel.

Once the Network properties dialog is open there will be a list of network properties services and protocols listed. Double click on the TCP/IP entry for the corresponding network card and this will bring up the TCP IP dialog for the card.

Under the Bindings tab, highlight File and Printer sharing and make sure the tick is removed, which inturn unbinds the TCP/IP protocol from File and Printer Sharing service.

This should correct the issue however if you wish to take advantage of File and Printer sharing service you will have to bind it to an alternative protocol such as IPX or Netbui.

Netbios Broadcasts

Due to the way that Windows supplies information about computer names and their LAN, there is broadcast mechanism that computers will use to advertise themselves. In earlier versions of WinGate this has caused issues with the dialler in WinGate being initiated by these client broadcasts.

Remedy

In the latest versions of WinGate, this has been remedied by several improvements, and the use of the DNS/Wins resolver (in particular to this scenario the WINS component) where you can set and configure the LM hosts file that WinGate will use to resolve computer names and their corresponding IP addresses on the Local Area Network.

To do this open this file from the DNS/Wins resolver configuration in GateKeeper(found under the system tab) and enter the Computer name and corresponding IP address as per the example given in the file.

Be sure to include details about the IP of the WinGate server and the loopback address for local host of 127.0.0.1.

Once done save the file and this should help to alleviate any Netbois broadcast issues that may arise.

Internet Application Scheduling

The last factor that may initiate spontaneous random dialling in WinGate from client machines, is whether client machines have applications that require Internet updates, such as OS updates, virus updates, scheduled synchronization of components files etc.

Obviously these need to be either set to schedule at predetermined times in the application’s configuration itself or switched of completely and never set to run.
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