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epochwolf
Asked: 2009-05-01 22:37:14 +0800 CST

VPN Solutions for Linux server and Windows, Linux, and OSX clients?

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I'm wondering what would be the best vpn solution for a linux server with windows, linux, and osx clients. I'm currently using openvpn but I find it difficult to set up and the windows client has given me more headaches than manually setting up a mailserver for the first time.

I have specific requirements for the clients. Some clients need to send their traffic through the vpn (laptops). Others only need to be able to be seen on the vpn but shouldn't be sending their traffic through the vpn (like the web server).

I would like to be able to use the Windows and OSX built in vpn clients if possible.

Are there other options available other than openvpn or am I doing something horribly wrong with openvpn?

windows vpn linux mac-osx

6 Answers

  1. OpenVPN is great. The client is not built into the OS though but I guess you can work that out. And its activly maintained so you can be sure that it will continue to work on all three OSs. If you could please add the problems you are having with openVPN? We have set up our VPN so we can do printing at home or remote connect to all our servers without them having to have any ports open to the public.

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  2. Windows and OS X have built in support for L2TP/IPsec, for which there are many server daemons available.

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  3. You'll probably want to look into PPTP. Windows and Linux both have servers for it and just about every OS has a native client (most phones and other devices too).

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  4. If you choose OpenVPN, server and user settings etc handling might be a bit of hassle. So you might be interested to use one of these as the main OpenVPN server base:

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  5. I'll say the same thing here that I said for How can I create a non-ssh VPN on debian/linux? :

    xl2tpd is in Debian. It's a server for L2TP IPSec VPN. Windows supports L2TP natively. Alternatively, you can use OpenSwan (also in Debian) to set up IPSec.

    I know you want to focus on built-in clients, but take a look at OpenVPN just the same. It's cross-platform and easy to set up and deploy. It's also extremely secure and flexible at the same time. I tried to set up xl2tpd and went with OpenVPN instead.

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  6. Did any of you read the original post? He is already using openvpn. I'd suggest you check out pptp and give the security concerns some consideration.

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