RDP and static IP address

[Guest Simon Weel]

we have a couple of XP clients in our SBS 2011 network. One of those machines needs to be accessed over internet with RDP. So I have to create a routing rule in the router we use (Smoothwall express). I can't specify a FQDN in the router, so I have to use the IP address of the XP client. Therefore, I set the IP address of the XP client in SBS 2011 DHCP as static. When the client is started, it is assigned the static IP address.

When I try to access the machine using RDP, it won't work. RDP displays a message it can't find the machine. After checking numerous things, I decided to configure the IP address on the XP client manually. After that, RDP connected without problems.

This puzzles me - in both scenarios the XP client had the same IP address, so why does RDP connect in one scenario and not in the second scenario? Is this due to the router we use or is it a Windows-thing?

Simon

 

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