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  From: Andrew Reid <andrew.reid@plug.cx>
  To  : Richard Russell <richard@yellowgoanna.com>
  Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 13:26:11 +0930

Re: FreeS/WAN and PoPToP VPN Hell

On Tue, May 28, 2002 at 09:50:35AM +0930, Richard Russell wrote:

> Situation is that I need secure comms via internet from a Private
> 192.168.x.y LAN behind a static IP Debian gateway machine to roving
> users on Windows 95|98|ME|NT4|2000|XP laptops and home PCs, which
> presumably will be on real IPs, but I guess I can't garantee that.
> 
> Pretty normal, eh?

Yup.

> So I've tried both FreeS/WAN (IPSec) and PoPToP (PPTP), and so far, have
> failed on each one.

* Twitches wildly in left eye

PoPToP has got to be one of the most annoying, disgusting,
unmaintained beasts that I have ever had to play with. I've lost count
of the number of hours that I (and colleagues) have spent trying to
get it going.

> Anyone successfully got this running in a similar config -- either ipsec
> or pptp? I'd love to have a chat...

It seems to me that the best way of actually going about this is to
buy a device (or use some software) that is *specifically designed* to
do this kind of thing. Whilst it's obviously possible to get an
inter-OS VPN happening, the amount of time that you sometimes have to
spend seems to be ridiculous.

Having said that, I'm lead to believe that mpd[1] under FreeBSD is
significantly easier to setup than PoPToP. I can't vouch for that with
my own experiences, but FreeBSD *is* generally easier than Linux.

   - andrew

[1] # cd /usr/ports/net/mpd
    # make install

-- 
| Andrew Reid [mailto:andrew.reid@plug.cx]
| Network Wrangler, Bit Herder
| C: +61-401-946-813  F: +61-8-8379-1093

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