setting up a VPN from scratch

[Charles Steinkuehler]

numa at thenuma.com wrote:
> To be honest, having used Free/SWAN some... I well... don't use it in
> production environments..  I actually the prefer the seamlessness of VPN
> network appliances.  Also, over the period of 2 years the power savings
> alone manage to pay for themselves.  Something to think about.
>  Hell, even the linksys VPN routers work great.  Kris

I can understand your perspective.  I also run dedicated firewall 
appliances, they just happen to be built out old PC hardware and run linux:
http://leaf-project.org/

Running FreeS/WAN isn't too bad, if you grab a disto with the kernel 
pre-patched for ipsec and all you have to do is setup the config files.

Plus, I couldn't find a 6-port 10/100 MBit linksys router I could use to 
proxy-arp my /26 into 4 seperate DMZ networks at best buy!  :)

Seriously though, the best reason for using something like linux to do 
firewalling/VPN is the flexability.  If you don't need the flexability, 
it's really hard to go wrong with the black-box firewall products 
available now (assuming you configure it properly, and change the 
default password!), especially with the prices as low as they've gotten 
lately.

-- 
Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net