[SoCoSA/discuss] OpenVPN? Or...?

[Trevor Benson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at socosa.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at socosa.org]
> Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 1:23 PM
> To: discuss at socosa.org
> Subject: [SoCoSA/discuss] OpenVPN? Or...?
> 
> Hi, all...
> 
> I've got a need for both remote-user (now) and remote-office (soon)
> connectivity, in a MS-Win-centric environment:  the servers are mostly
> Win2K, 1 Win2003, 1-2 Mac's; the workstations are mostly Win2KPro, a
> few WinXP & Mac's.  Nobody is yet running Linux, although there's
> Linux on the gateway router (nobody else has realized this -- to them,
> it's a proprietary appliance).  Home-users will be running all sorts
> of OS'es, but again mostly MS-Win-centric.
> 
> Before I got here, they had remote-access via single-modem dial-up
> (i.e. one user at a time, slowly); the gateway router also pre-dates
> my arrival.
> 
> I'm looking at a VPN as likely the "best" solution (i.e. one solution
> for both problems), but thought I'd ask here if anyone had other
> opinions they'd care to share.
> 
> Given a VPN, I'm inclined toward "OpenVPN":
>    http://sourceforge.net/projects/openvpn
>    http://openvpn.net/
> But again, I'm interested in others' opinions...  Has anyone run this
> thing MS-only?  Anything else they've liked (or disliked)?
> 
> 
> - Steve S.


Openswan is a fairly decent product.  And there is a client to use just IPSEC for Windows, and Mac I believe has one as well that doesn’t require L2TP.

FYI: WinXP/2k boxes work much better on domains when they have L2TP (or PPTP) because they will be assigned a local address.  Without configuring DNS settings or WINS then you probably want the VPN client to be a standalone system (not joined to the domain) and accessing resources on the network via IP.  Otherwise I think your going to run into headaches without providing WINS and DNS when the tunnel gets initiated.

Trevor