Providing Connection Manager Phone Book Support


Use CPS to create, publish, and update Connection Manager phone books, which include all information relating to a POP, such as area code, phone number, and user authentication methods supported. The Connection Manager phone book also includes various network settings that you configure when you run the CMAK wizard.

Figure 9.2 shows the process for providing phone book support.

click to expand
Figure 9.2: Providing Connection Manager Phone Book Support

For more information about security considerations when using CPS, see "Security Information for Connection Point Services" in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.

Using PBA to Create and Maintain Phone Books

PBA in CPS allows you to create and maintain phone books for use with Connection Manager. By using CPS, you can ensure your remote access users have the most recent phone numbers to connect to your network.

Note

If you are providing a VPN-only profile you do not need to create a phone book and can skip to "Customizing Connection Manager" later in this chapter.

Before using PBA, you must install it on a computer running either Windows Server 2003 or Microsoft Windows XP Professional. You install PBA by running Pbainst.exe from the VALUEADD\MSFT\MGMT\PBA folder on the Windows Server 2003 family CD-ROM or Windows XP Professional CD-ROM.

For information about how to administer phone books from the command line, see "Administer phone books" in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.

Creating, Publishing, and Maintaining Phone Books

A phone book contains one or more Points of Presence (POPs), each of which includes a telephone number to access the network or the Internet. Connection Manager phone books allow the user to have a complete POP list, so they have more than one phone number to choose from when traveling or if there is a problem connecting to a specific number.

Before you begin adding POPs to the phone book, you can create a list of regions to organize the POPs. Regions allow the user to see a filtered list within their country or dependency. This reduces the number of POPs the Connection Manager client displays at one time, so the user chooses from a list of POPs targeted to their region. Use the Region Editor in PBA to create a new list of regions, or import regions from an existing .pbr file.

After you have gathered all the POPs contained in the phone book, use PBA to create your new phone book.

When you create a new phone book, PBA creates a phone book file (.pbk) and a region file (.pbr). When you finish creating the phone book, you need to publish it so that it is available on the PBS server.

  • To publish the phone book

    1. Start the FTP service on the PBS server.

    2. Enable the account that was created on the PBS server for phone book posting.

    3. Start PBA, click the Tools menu, and then click Publish Phone Book.

    4. In the Options dialog box, type the server address, user name, and password used to post the phone book to the server running PBS.

    5. Click Create to create the .cab files in the release directory.

    6. Enter the address of the PBS server and click Post to post the new release to the PBS server.

    7. Disable the account on the PBS server.

    8. Stop the FTP service on the PBS server.

Use PBA to edit your phone book when adding or changing telephone numbers, and then use the same procedure to re-publish the updated phone book.

Updating Phone Books

To ensure the client always has the most recent version of the phone book, leave the Automatically download phone book updates check box selected on the Phone Book page of the CMAK wizard.

If you have configured automatic phone book updates, after the client connects to the network, the client sends a request to PBS that includes the name of the phone book file and the version currently installed on the client. The server then replies with either a full or an incremental update, if one is required.

Using an Outsourced Phone Book

To provide a wider range of phone numbers, your organization might outsource your phone book to a telecommunications company or an ISP. If your telecommunications company or ISP uses CPS, you can import that company's phone book.

When negotiating with the ISP or telecommunications company, you should ask that company to provide a service profile that contains all its phone book information, including an update URL, and then use CMAK to merge this profile into your service profile.

If the company does not provide you with a service profile, request the phone book .(pbk) and region .(pbr) files for the phone book, as well as the update URL. Use these files to create a service profile, and merge it into the service profile you will send to your users.

If your telecommunications company or ISP does not use CPS, obtain the phone numbers in another format, such as a text file, and import this file into your phone book. For more information about importing phone book files using PBS, see "Add, edit, or delete POPs by command line" in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.

For more information about merging service profiles, see "Merging Service Profiles" later in this chapter.

Hosting Phone Books on a PBS Server

You do not need to run PBS on a high-end computer because any computer capable of running Windows Server 2003 and Internet Information Services (IIS) can run PBS.

Just before publishing, ensure that the PBS server is using IIS to run FTP and the Web server service. This is necessary for PBS servers to receive posts from PBA and to provide updated files to clients. For more information about IIS, "Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 overview" in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.

Caution

For security reasons, do not allow anonymous FTP access to your PBS server. Also, only run the FTP service when you are actually publishing or updating a phone book. For more information about CPS security, see "Security information for Connection Point Services" in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.

PBS servers can be located on your perimeter network or in the perimeter network of the ISP if you outsource phone book support. Because the phone book updates after connecting to your network, locate the PBS server such that the client has access to it after a successful connection to your network. For more information about security in perimeter networks, see "Deploying ISA Server in this book.




Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit(c) Deploying Network Services 2003
Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit(c) Deploying Network Services 2003
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 146

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