Friday, December 08, 2006

Linux VPN Client for Cisco VPN Router

The desktop of my office is in private network behind a firewall. If I need to access the desktop of my office, I need to use VPN by connecting the Cisco VPN Router in my office. It is not a trivial task to connecting VPN router in Linux platform, and there are seems several ways:
  1. Use the official Cisco VPN Client for Linux. During the installation, it needs the kernel headers for module complication. It should work in most cases. However, this software package is not freely available and open source.
  2. VPNC is an open source VPNC client target for cisco3000 VPN Concentrator. It works well for me. However, some features are not supported, e.g. re-keying, digital certificate authentication....
  3. Openswan is an implementation of IPsec for Linux. It is not only a VPN client, it can act as VPN router. I found some document about how to use Openswan for connecting Cisco VPN router. However, it fails in my Ubuntu box :<.
There is some web pages mentions that the XAuth of Cisco VPN router is non-standard. No wonder open source software packages don't support it well.


4 comments:

alex smith said...

It may be a useful tool, but there certainly a lot of troubles while performing the setup. I don't know how other users deal with this task, but i have really had a lot of troubles with this. I've been adviced to use the vpn of Secure Chanel. Can anyone tell me something about it? I would really need an advice about it.

Anonymous said...

Good VPN client.Nice blog.Thanks.
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Unknown said...

Thanks a lot.Good post about VPN client for Cisco router.
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Tromox Bikes said...

nice