by Frank McPherson, author of How To Do Everything With Your Pocket PC, 2nd Edition

How do I connect to corporate networks using VPN?

Virtual Private Networking uses encryption to provide a secure connection between client devices and a VPN gateway. It is typically used to connect a device to private corporate networks via the Internet.

There are different ways in which encryption is done to secure data, and most VPN client programs and VPN gateways do not support all the encryption methods. Microsoft Windows NT and 2000 servers can be configured as a VPN gateways that support the Point-To-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), which is a Microsoft method for encrypting data to create VPNs. Pocket PC 2002 has support for PPTP so that you can connect to VPN gateways that support the PPTP protocol.

To configure VPNs on Pocket PC 2002 devices start Connection Manager by tapping Start, Settings, Connections, Connections. Tap the Modify button in the middle section of Connection Manager, which configures what we refer to as Work settings. (The section label says "When needed, automatically connect to Work using these settings:")

At the bottom of the Work Settings screen tap the VPN tab, and then tap New. You will then see a screen for you to enter a name for the VPN connection, which can be anything that you want to enter, and then a field to enter the name or IP address of the VPN gateway that you connect to. You will most likely need to enter an IP address in that field since the name of the gateway server is usually not provided to the Internet's domain name servers.

If you are using a network adapter, either wired or wireless, to connect to a home network and the Internet, tap the Proxy Settings tab and then tap the This network connects to the Internet check box, and tap OK. Finally, to make the connection you will also have to configure the network adapter to use the Work settings, which you do by changing the last drop-down on the Connection Manager (which is labeled "My network card connects to:") to Work. 

If want to use a dial-up connection to connect to the corporate network, modify the Work settings, and create a new connection on the Modem tab using information from your Internet Service Provider.

Initiating the connection to a corporate network varies depending on the type of server you want to connect to. If you want to retrieve email you need to create a service in Inbox for the email server, and configure that service to use the Default Work Settings for the connection. With the service properly configured you simply have to connect to the mail server, or run a Send and Receive, and a VPN connection should be established.

If you want to open a web site on a corporate network using Pocket Internet Explorer, simply enter the URL for the site in the address bar. Unfortunately, this is where you will run into a problem with how Connection Manager works. If the the server portion of the URL is a shortname, then it will use a VPN connection. For example if you enter http://myserver/index.html that will be interpreted as a server on the corporate network and a VPN connection will be established. However, if the server portion of the URL is fully-qualified, which means it has dots in it, that will be interpreted as server on the Internet. In other words, if you enter http://www.myserver.com/index.html which is a URL for a web site on the corporate Intranet, a VPN connection will not be made and PIE will attempt to find that page on the public Internet using the Internet. 

As mentioned earlier in this article, PPTP is not the only method for encrypting data for VPNs. Another popular method is IP Security, or IPSec, and that is not supported by default on any Pocket PC device. Fortunately, at least three different companies sell VPN clients for Pocket PCs that do support IPSec, and which will work with many different VPN gateways. I have created a directory of these VPN client programs, which I will update as I find out about more VPN client programs.