DirectAccess

By now, most of us know what DirectAccess is. For those who don’t, Direct Access is a revolutionary VPN technology which was introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2. It provides seamless connectivity to corporate resources without requiring any dial-up or VPN. DirectAccess connectivity is based on IPsec, IPV6, and transition technologies like Teredo, 6to4, IP-HTTPS, and ISATAP. In DirectAccess, the IPv6 traffic is encapsulated in an IPv4 packet and is then sent across the internet, after which the DirectAccess server reads the IPv6 headers and executes it.

In our previous post at http://www.nappliance.com/blog/nappliance-nuag-and-directaccess-better-together we highlighted how UAG and DirectAccess are better together and the benefits of connecting through the DirectAccess. In this post we will concentrate on the advantages DirectAccess has over the traditional VPN connectivity and why companies would want to move away from the VPN infrastructure.

A client that is trying to access an SSL enabled application on a backend server (e.g. Exchange) that is published through the Forefront UAG portal gets an error, specifically:

“An unknown error occurred while processing the certificate. Contact the site administrator”.

The cause:

When you install an update for Microsoft Forefront UAG, it does not appear under the Windows control panel > Add/Remove programs. So, If you have to remove it for some reason then how do you remove an update? Well, UAG has an in-built script to remove the previously installed updates. The script is located at

Supported client OS: Windows XP 32bit and Windows Vista 32bit