VPN - Which way to go?

[John Nielsen]

On Wednesday 05 March 2008 06:21:47 pm Alphons "Fonz" van Werven wrote:
> I need to setup a VPN connection to the university's network. Now,
> there's a chapter in the handbook about "VPN over IPsec" and there
> seems to be this thing called OpenVPN in the ports collection. Which is
> the better way to go? All I need is to obtain an IP address within the
> university's IP range (because otherwise I can't use their outgoing
> STMP), that's all. So as simple a solution as possible would be
> preferred.

Unless you control a machine on the university side you'll have to use 
something interoperable with their setup. I think OpenVPN is great and 
use it regularly, but as far as I know it only interoperates with 
OpenVPN, and I'd be surprised if your university were using it.

See what you can find out about the setup on the other side. If they have 
some sort of generic setup guide for Windows users you can probably 
deduce from that. If it's a straight PPTP VPN (like you'd use with 
Windows' "dial-up networking" sans IPSEC) you can use net/poptop. If they 
require some kind of client then you may or may not be able to get it to 
work, but do ask again if you learn more about what's on the other side 
and get stuck.

JN