ARA: Personal FileSharing Can‘t Find File Server On Net

If I dial into a network with Apple Remote Access (ARA) 2.0 and the Macintosh that is dialing in has personal file sharing turned on with a name the same as a server on the dialed-in network zone, the server becomes unavailable. Sometimes I see two servers sometimes one server, but every time I try to log in to a server I log in to the ARA Client.

What I've found as a short term solution is to move the ComServer to its own zone with nothing else on it, but this problem still exists. Users can still setup individual ARA servers on their Macintosh computers thus opening up the possibility of further problems on the network.
Some quick workarounds are:

* Use the Remote Only setting in the Network control panel, this is exactly one of the situations it was designed to handle.

* Turn off FileSharing at the ARA client.

* Advertise the names of the servers on the ARA Server's zone and tell people not to use them as their personal server names.

NOTE: If you were to try to bring up a personal server with the same name as an existing one while already connected to the network you are told the name is in use and to select another. You will get the same error if you attempt to change the name of an existing FileSharing server to that of an existing server. This is not an ARA limitation, it just gets more complicated with ARA since both servers are already up when the ARA client joins the network.
Published Date: Feb 19, 2012