Re: vpn under linux

[Victor Julien <victor@nk.nl>]

On Saturday 10 April 2004 11:18, Antony Stone wrote:
> PPP is Point-to-Point Protocol, and has almost nothing to do with VPNs :)
>
> SSH is Secure Shell, and at least it contains some encryption, but again,
> is almost nothing to do with VPNs (but more on that later).
>
> PPTP is Pretty Poor Tunneling Protocol (oh, no, sorry, it's a Point to
> Point Tunneling Protocol...), and is the way Microsoft systems do VPN.
>
> The "standard" way to do VPN (in other words, the method which is supported
> by most vendors, uses open standards, and also has the best security) is
> IPsec.
>
> The usual way to do IPsec under Linux is to use FreeS/WAN under kernel 2.4,
> or the built-in IPsec under kernel 2.6.
>
> I use FreeS/WAN, I like it, it works well with netfilter (once you've got
> used to the path the packets take at each end), and I'm happy with its
> 3DES/RSA security.
>
> I said I'd mention more about SSH - that also uses good encryption and is
> therefore secure, and once you have an SSH connection between two machines,
> you can "tunnel" almost any network traffic you like between them, and it
> does work, although I wouldn't select this as a first choice for a VPN
> because there's a lot more manual setting up involved.   IPsec is more like
> a network route - you just configure it, and let the two endpoint machines
> get on with negotiating the link, and then computers from whichever network
> ranges you've configured the VPN to support can connect to each other
> transparently through a nice secure tunnel across the Internet.
>

You can also take a look at OpenVPN (http://openvpn.sourceforge.net). It's 
quite easy to set up, is crossplatform and can be made transparant. Also, it 
doesn't require kernel modification.

Regards,
Victor


> Hope this helps,
>
> Regards,
>
> Antony.