Roaming clients/dynamic IPs connecting into a static firewall - cheap

[dellboy]

I am currently reinvestigating the whole firewall VPN issue for a small client. 2 years ago we set up a series of Netgear FVS318 LAN-to-LAN VPNs and a couple of Safenet softremote clients. It worked but was a real pain - as you will read in any of the FVS318 forum posts, its not easy and it was almost as cheap to buy a hardware FW as it was to buy the Safenet software.

Moving on a couple of years and the clients are looking to grow the network with more roaming clients etc, so I am looking for suggestions on a solution. I read IPCOP is good as a FW - does it have any 'free' / opensource VPN client utilities? (I'm not Linux orientated so I am not too sure how easy it would be to set up) The Safenet worked with dynamic IPs on a dial up etc but was expensive per client.

The solution I require is a VPN firewall with a user friendly VPN client that works on dynmically assigned IP addresses, these addresses will usually be assigned on a dialup but could also be through an ADSL connection.

If anyone has any suggestions I would be most greatful for thoughts and opinions. As its a small company cost is obviously a factor, hence not wanting to buy a pile of Safenet licenses - last but not least, most client/roaming machines will probably be running WindowsXP.

Cheers

 

[JimPletcher]

An older version (3.2.2) of SSH Sentinell (Safenet in disguise) is available at:

http://ftp.up.ac.za/pub/linux/ssh/pub/sentinel/

I suspect that most of the problem you had with the FVS318, was the NetGear product itself. I managed to pick up several ZyWALL 10w units on Ebay for less-than-netgear prices. Unfortunately, it took a while.