[TriLUG] Another VPN Question

[Tanner Lovelace]

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:25:00 -0400, Brian Henning
<lugmail at cheetah.dynip.com> wrote:
>   As it happens, today a coworker came to me wanting to be able to access
> our financial files from home.  Again, VPN to the rescue, or so I thought.
> OpenVPN sounds really good; only problem is, this coworker only has Windows
> 98 on his computer at home; OpenVPN calls for 2k/XP.  Are VPN clients and
> servers interchangeable?  Can I run OpenVPN on the company side (on our
> linux server) and just find whatever VPN client I can get my hands on that
> will run on Win98?  If anyone could suggest a VPN client they have
> experience with that works well on 98 in conjunction with OpenVPN, or any
> other f/oss solution I can install on the company side's linux box, I'd be
> eternally grateful.

Sadly, I don't think this will work.  OpenVPN tunnels everything over a
a TCP (or was it UDP?) connection on a single port while other VPNs
like IPSEC or PPTP use a separate IP protocol.
 
> This coworker is using dialup, so there's no way to install much in the way
> of VPN appliance hardware in his home.

For many years I ran a linux box that acted as a gateway and NAT box for
a dialup connection, so don't count that out.  If diald is still around, I used
to use that for on demand dialing.  That way, for the internal
network, it appeared
to be always connected (albeit with a long startup time for the first
connection).

Alternatively, the linux version of the PPTP server is called, iirc, PoPToP and
works quite well.  Any security concerns you may have heard about PPTP
are just in the specific MS implementation of it, not in the protocol itself, so
that might be an option for you...

Cheers,
Tanner