Good VPN client for Linux?

Post #105,345

6/9/03 7:50:50 AM

I've got a cow-orker asking my opinion on [link|http://www.freeswan.org|http://www.freeswan.org] as a VPN client for Linux. I've never used it or any other, so I don't have one. Any recommendations?

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Post #105,356

by folkert

6/9/03 9:03:19 AM

Good, Bad and the Ugly

FreeSwan works just fine. Actually works very well. Works with many different configs.

FreeSwan also has the tendancy to be Extremely picky about things. Everything *MAY* look 1000000% okay on both ends, but there is that extra whitespace/unprintable char at he end of something... oops. (This might have been fixed recently, seen alot of work about this anomaly)

FreeSwan tends to be very Kernel Specific... ie: The same kernel needed to be used at both ends (literally that same one from the same package (compile... etc). More recently this has been resolved partly(mostly) (as well there has been a lot of work done on this). Also, it doesn't like NAT. It can work with it, but really doesn't like NAT. behind the VPN link sure no problem... but It likes to be a real host on the Internet and full IP DNS name control by you as well.

Other than that, if you can work through it's various problems (yes quite a few I know bleh) it really seems to have alot of functionality and it *DOES* work.

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Post #105,360

by drewk

6/9/03 9:49:07 AM

More details

Should have mentioned the first time, this is for the cow-orker to connect with his Linux box to a W2K-based VPN. Since you (and most of the docs I saw) are assuming the same system on both ends of the connection, what other details would I need to know? There seems to be some distinction between whether it's W2K or the Cisco hardware in between that makes the difference.

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Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.

Post #114,338

by scoenye

8/19/03 2:06:57 PM

Check the interoperability docs

There is an interoperability doc for each version of FreeS/WAN. They can be found through [link|http://www.freeswan.org/doc.html|http://www.freeswan.org/doc.html]

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