Wifi – Can the ‘Security type’ of a wireless network prevent a connection to SQL Server 2008

sql-server-2008wifi

I have a dev instance of SQL Server 2008 running on a Windows 2003 virtual private server that I can access without problems from SSMS running on my laptop, connected to my wireless network at home.

But, when I take the laptop to my office and connect to the wireless network there I cannot access the database server from SSMS – the connection to the database times out. To connect I need to RDP into the VPS and run SSMS on the remote server.

I've spoken to the admins running the wireless network at the office and ports 1433 and 1434 are open and I shouldn't have any problems.

One of the obvious differences between the two wireless networks is that at home I'm using WPA2 while the office network is still set up with WEP. Is it possible for this to be causing problems?

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1. The server is Windows Server 2003 R2 x63 Std. Ed. The database is SQL Server 2008 Web Edition (64 bit) 10.0.1600.22.

Any help (thoughts on what could be wrong, or how I can go about troubleshooting this) appreciated.

Best Answer

The WiFi's encryption level should be completely transparent to any applications that are communicating over the network. If you take a look at the OSI model, it should show that all the wifi and encryption related stuff is going on in layer 1: the physical layer. Being able to pass any data to the remote system means it is not a physical layer issue.

So I think I can pretty definitively say that the wireless encryption is not your issue.

Now to what your issue is... I'm not sure, but I'm going to say it is probably related to how you are accessing the server.

  1. Are you accessing the remote system by IP or by Name?

    If by name, can you resolve that name into a valid IP (using nslookup)?

  2. Can you telnet into the server on port 1433?

    a. Can you telnet to port 1433 from either or both networks?

  3. Check SQLServer's configuration, it is entirely possible (and indeed likely) that it is not running on port 1433. I believe it attempts to use dynamic port allocation by default. Microsoft has specific instructions on how to get it to use one static port.

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