[vox-tech] VPN question

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Peter Jay Salzman (p at dirac.org):

> Anyhow, on to the question.  I'm going to be given access to a VPN.  I know
> nothing about VPNs.
> 
> I'm hoping that there's a VPN protocol, and that it's not some propietary
> thing that I don't have a ghost in hell of connecting to with my home
> computers.  If it's a well known protocol, I'm sure there's a Linux client
> that I can use.

PPTP and L2TP are pretty common, mostly because even Microsoft can
create half-assed implementations of those.  If you're lucky, it'll be
one of those.  (Of course, IT Dept. help from the college has been
sacrificed in advance to the great god Policy.  That's the small nugget
of information to be gleaned from that lot of noise you were subjected
to, earlier.)

Most other common VPNs are heavily proprietary.

I remember that a former employer, a rather worthless proprietary
software firm in Fremont, informed me that it expected me to install
some VPN software at my house, so that I could tunnel into a customer
site if necessary during my off hours.  It was, of course, some Win32
thing.  I replied I'd consider accepting the loan of a company machine
dedicated to that purpose, provided it were small, quiet, and
low-powered.

The manager in question said, no, we'd expect you to install this on
_your_ computer at home.  I spelled it out for him:  Since I actually
_use_ my computers, none of them are available to run ToyOS -- but I 
would consider accepting a suitable loaner, since it was deemed a
company priority.

I didn't quote get around to saying "and I don't want ToyOS even if the
firm offers to install onto one of my machines the same single copy and
S/N of ToyOS 2000 that it was installing all over the firm's
headquarters, either."  It seems to have not been a priority, after all.

http://pptpclient.sourceforge.net/
http://www.l2tpd.org/

...but that's pretty feeble, and you can do better on your own.  (I
haven't used any of this stuff.)