[olug] VPN

[Tim Larson]

On 11/13/2012 9:41 AM, Jon Steckelberg wrote:
> I have a question for you all.  The company I work for has windows based
> systems.  We contract out our IT to Midwest Technology Solutions Inc.
> here locally.  They do not have any Linux expertise on staff.  I
> personally use Linux Mint on all my computers.  Now for my question, I
> would like to VPN into the work network from my Linux Mint 13 laptop.
> What is the best way to set this up?  I know this is a complicated issue
> and if anyone would like to contact me directly please do.

In my (limited) experience, this depends greatly on the VPN 
implementation being used.  In theory, there are VPN standards that 
should be interoperable.  In practice, I never could get Macs or *nixen 
to connect to the Cisco VPN used by a former employer, as it wouldn't 
work with the Free client implementations, and their own clients for 
those platforms were lacking or nonexistent.

All you can do is get all the pertinent info (IP, keys, etc.) from them 
and try to set it up. Prepare to be flexible and do troubleshooting 
yourself from your end, report the difficulties you see (if any), and 
hopefully support from their side is better than just "it would work if 
you did XYZ in Windows, so nyah!"  Being Windows-based does not 
necessarily imply a MS monoculture. ☺


Tim
-- 
Tim Larson