[olug] VPN

[Rob Townley]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Tim Larson <larson at towncommons.com> wrote:

> 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. ☺
>
>
Jon,
 there are different types of VPN they could have set up.  Would have to
know the existing type currently setup at your work.
 If your employer allows, setup up a VPN server at home which your machine
at work automatically connects to upon bootup.
 i use tinc-vpn.org myself because it is completely opensource and in my
yum repositories,  LinMacWin crossplatform, allows me to have multiple
"servers' and runs as a service even with no user logged on.
 However, you oughta go with something more standard at least until it is
easier to use.