I have two servers on different untrusted domains. Server A is the publisher and is running SQL Server 2008 R2. Server B is the subscriber and is running SQL 2008 R2 Express. Since the servers are on separate domains without a trust relationship, I am using pass-through authentication to connect to each server. This involves creating a local windows account on each server with the same username and password and then using windows authentication to connect to the remote server. Using this method, I am able to connect Server A to Server B and vice versa in SQL Server Management Studio. I am also able to create a transactional publication on Server A and create a push subscription to it on Server B.
However when I open up the View Synchronization Status Window, I get the message "The process could not connect to SUbscriber 'Server B'." Opening up Replication Monitor gives me the following error messages:
The process could not connect to Subscriber 'Server B'. (Source: MSSQL_REPL, Error number: MSSQL_REPL0)
Named Pipes Provider: Could not open a connection to SQL Server [53]. (Source: MSSQLServer, Error number: 53)
A network-related or instance-specific error has occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Server is not found or not accessible. Check if instance name is correct and if SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. For more information see SQL Server Books Online. (Source: MSSQLServer, Error number: 53)
Login timeout expired (Source: MSSQLServer, Error number: HYT00)
Everything else that I have read about this error says that it's a permissions issue, but I don't think this is the case. Just to make sure that there weren't any permissions issues, I made the windows accounts that I am using for the pass-through authentication local administrators on each server, db_owners on both the publisher and subscriber databases, and sysadmins on each instance of SQL Server.
Does anyone know if something other than permissions could be causing this error? What confuses me is that the servers are clearly able to connect to each other using the pass-through authentication, but the connection still fails at the distribution agent.