VPN

Cisco is migrating away from their Ipsec based VPN Client Software, and are pushing their SSL client traffic encryption solutions. As a consequence, since I want to keep using Ipsec based VPN connections, it was time to look for an alternate client softare package.

I came across Shrew Soft Inc. Ipsec Vpn Client. I first installed the release labelled as 2.1.7 stable on to Windows 7 64. It didn't seem to connect to a Cisco IOS based VPN server. After troubleshooting the connection for a bit, I upgraded to the version labelled as 2.2.0-beta-2. That version worked successfully.

The Shrew Soft Ipsec Vpn Client starts up quickly, has a number of handy troubleshooting views, and makes it easy to copy and re-use configuration files on a number of different client machines.

I was quite impressed that it readily and properly dealt with Ipsec server supplied split tunnel access-lists, set up proper routes in the workstation routing table, and even offers a pre-signin vpn connection option.

Jimmy Larsson's Config example: Static to dynamic IPSec helped with the configuration on the Cisco IOS Router/Server side of things.

Here is a link to a paper that has a bunch of useful stuff in it regarding Microsoft VPN's, IAS (Internet Authentication Server), security scripting, and Windows 2003 based Remote Access Infrastructure: Security Enhancements for Remote Access at Microsoft: Technical White Paper