[Eug]

I tried doing a search here, but when I search for "VPN" I get nothing.

Anyways, what are the simplest yet effective VPN apps on the Mac? I can't remember which one I tried a few months back, but I couldn't get it to work with my specific workplace. Unfortunately, my workplace doesn't support anything but Win XP software so they wouldn't help me.

Any recommendations? I hadn't really looked into it deeply at the time because things were working fine with LogMeIn... but our IT dept. is now specifically blocking LogMeIn access. Ironically, they had looked the other way on LogMeIn for years, and in fact it was an IT guy who suggested we use it, presumably because it saved them lots of time in VPN support calls I suppose.

I would prefer free, but I can spend some money too, as long as there is a trial version I can try using first. I really don't want to run it under a virtual machine with XP, as my main remote computer for this is actually a PowerPC machine, and VirtualPC runs like total crap on it. I do have VMware on an Intel machine, but it's not my machine that usually remote in from.

[turtle777]

You might wanna tag onto this thread:

http://forums.macnn.com/92/networkin...s/#post3909436

-t

[Eug]

Should I? I guess I should have mentioned I'm specifically looking for client software.

They have Aventail as the client software, on XP.

[turtle777]

Ok, so you're confusing me.

When you say they have Aventail, you mean your work has Aventail as the VPN SERVER software, or that they use Aventail as a client for they XP PCs ?

The easiest way to search is if you know what kind of VPN they are using. Then search for that + "Mac client".

-t

[turtle777]

Have a look at this, this cam up when I googled for it:

http://www.sonicwall.com/downloads/S...ease_Notes.pdf

-t

[Cold Warrior]

Viscosity is a nice client app for openvpn-based servers. We could use info about what sort of vpn they run, e.g., ipsec or others.

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by Eug 

I tried doing a search here, but when I search for "VPN" I get nothing.

I think it's an issue with vB search being 4 characters or more. I'm not sure if this is something tweak-able by a vB admin or if it's hardcoded into vBull.

[Art Vandelay]

Don't forget the OS natively supports L2TP over IPSec, PPTP (Microsoft's preferred protocol) and Cisco IPSec. You just add it as an interface in the Network prefpane.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Ok, so you're confusing me.

When you say they have Aventail, you mean your work has Aventail as the VPN SERVER software, or that they use Aventail as a client for they XP PCs ?

The easiest way to search is if you know what kind of VPN they are using. Then search for that + "Mac client".

-t

Correct. You need to know what kind of VPN server you are connecting to, there is no standard. VPN is not one-size-fits-all.

[besson3c]

Eug: if you have access to a machine on the network you wish to connect to, I suggest an OpenVPN server and either Viscosity (as Cold Warrior has suggested) or Tunnelblick if you want a free OS X client (I use the latter). The OpenVPN server is pretty straight forward to setup, far more so than your traditional IPSec based solution.

I'd also suggest skipping PPTP based solutions.

Note that the VPN client built into OS X does not work with OpenVPN networks.

[Eug]

The client that is supported by the IT dept here is Aventail, on XP. I guess I'll have to do more digging to learn about the various protocols used, cuz as it stands now, I have no idea.

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Have a look at this, this cam up when I googled for it:

http://www.sonicwall.com/downloads/S...ease_Notes.pdf

Hmmm... Very interesting.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Note that the VPN client built into OS X does not work with OpenVPN networks.

That really blows.

I wonder how much longer until Apple enables by default to create VPNs w/o OS X Server. Would be a nice feature.

-t

[besson3c]

It would also be a liability for Apple, as is making all stuff that requires a sense of responsibility and competence accessible to people who know just enough to cause harm.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

It would also be a liability for Apple, as is making all stuff that requires a sense of responsibility and competence accessible to people who know just enough to cause harm.

I dunno about this.

They make it real easy to open up SSH, which comes with equal responsibility.

-t

[besson3c]

OpenSSH is very secure so long as you don't have the person's password. A good VPN, likewise, but in creating a VPN you are also creating a VLAN that when compromised exposes all machines on the network that count on the private network not being accessible from the outside world.