Provide HP ThinPro Internet Access using RRAS and NAT

Introduction

In this article I explain how to use Windows RRAS feature to allow your ThinPro device access to the internet.  In this scenario the ThinPro client is managed by HPDM installed on a HyperV Windows Server. The ThinPro device connects to a physical hub and that hub also has a connection to the HyperV host device (my laptop) via a USB ethernet adapter.  The HyperV host has two external virtual switches configured.  One switch provides the HPDM virtual machine with connectivity to this external hub and thus the HP ThinPro connected network.  The other switch provides the HPDM virtual server machine with WIFI access to the internet.  The HPDM server also provides the thin client with an IP address from a 10.10.10.0/24 DHCP scope.  It also provides a DNS service.  Thus we can use RRAS to provide the ThinPro device with access to the internet using NAT.

The Hyper-V Virtual Switches.

My laptop has two network adapters. I have a physical Realtek USB GbE Family Controller adapter and an Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 adapter.  In Hyper-V switch manager I created two external switches based on these adapters.

The virtual switch based on the USB Ethernet adapter is called Private Lab Network and provides connectivity from the HPDM virtual machine server to the HP ThinPro physical device via a physical hub. On the server the adapter is called Ethernet 4 and has an IP address of 10.10.10.200

The virtual switch, based on the  Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 adapter, is called Internet and provides connectivity to my Internet router.  On the HPDM server the connection is called Ethernet 5 and has an IP address of 192.168.1.235.

The Network Topology

The HP ThinPro physical device gets a 10.10.10.0/24 IP address, DNS and router address from DHCP on the HPDM server.  This gets routed through the physical USB ethernet adaptor.  The HPDM Hyper-V virtual Windows Server machine has a static IP address of 10.10.10.200/24 and thus is on the same same subnet as the physical HP ThinPro Server.  The HPDM server also has an IP address of 192.168.1.235 and thus is also on the same subnet of my Internet Router, whose address is 192.168.1.254.

We can see then that the HPDM virtual machine has access to two networks and therefore we can use it for Network Address Translation (NAT) as configured in the Routing and Remote Access Service feature installed on the HPDM Windows Server.

In summary, for the HP ThinPro network we have:

Detail	Configuration
Network ID	10.10.10.0
DHCP Range	10.10.10.20-10.10.10.40
DHPC Range Subnet Mask	255.255.255.0
Default Gateway	10.10.10.200
DNS Servers	192.168.1.254,10.10.10.200
HPDM Server	10.10.10.200

For the HPDM network we have:

Detail	Configuration
Network IDs	10.10.10.0, 192.168.1.0
DHCP Range	192.168.1.2-192.168.1.253
DHCP Range Subnet Mask	255.255.255.0
Default Gateway	192.168.1.254
DNS Servers	192.168.1.254,10.10.10.200
HPDM Server	10.10.10.200

The Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Configuration.

Note: The following assumes you have already installed the RRAS feature on your HPDM server.

The first step to getting this working is to create two static routes - one for each network adapter on the virtual HPDM Hyper-V machine.

The next step is to Right click on IPv4 and select New Routing Protocol.  Follow the wizard to install the Routing Information Protocol (RIP).  Once this is done right click on RIP and select New Interface.  By doing this you can add both your Internet facing HPDM interface (Ethernet 5 in my case) and your HP ThinPro interface (Ethernet 4 in my case).  Configure the Neighbors properties so that the Use Neighbors in addition to broadcast and multicast option is selected.  Add the Default Gateways of each interface as shown.

Our next task is to add the  HP ThinPro private Interface (in my case Ethernet 4) and the HPDM Internet Interface (in my case Ethernet 5) to the NAT node.  

So for the private HP ThinPro Ethernet 4 network we have:

Private network for HP ThinPro configured as Private

For the HPDM public server network with access to the internet we have:

Public network on HPDM server configured for NAT and as a Public interface

Configure DHPC to deliver both DNS Server Addresses.

Your DHCP scope should be configured so that the HP ThinPro client gets both the internal DNS server address and the Internet Router's DNS address.

Conclusion

Provided you have followed the principles in the blog, your super secure HP ThinPro device should now be receiving internet content to its private network, routed through NAT on your HPDM Hyper-V Windows server.

I hope you have enjoyed this little blog, and I wish you similar success in configuring NAT for your HP ThinPro environment.