RE: VPN Appliance that works with Microsoft?

["Andrew Helm-Cowley" <andrew.cowley () techie com>]

You could also look at Nokia's net CC500 vpn appliance - costs about
1.5K and can do 4.5Mb throughput and approx 500 tunnels - also they
canbe clustered together for HA/Load balancing - easy setup 

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: firewall-wizards-admin () nfr com
[mailto:firewall-wizards-admin () nfr com]On Behalf Of Keith.Morgan
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 10:29 AM
To: 'firewall-wizards () nfr net'
Subject: RE: [fw-wiz] VPN Appliance that works with Microsoft?


We managed to get Free S/Wan to work with Microsoft.  However, the
configuration is maddening (on the microsoft end) and the connection was
flaky.  We were attempting to make it work from a 'road-warrior' type
setup.
It was impractical since the microsoft set up makes you plug in the ip
address of the microsoft box for each ipsec 'policy.'  The
impracticality of
that is based on the fact that most of our road warriors are not network
engineers and would be boggled by the task of navigating microsoft's
terrible ipsec gui.

If you're looking for a network to network VPN connection to a Microsoft
IPSEC implementation, it may be an option for you. But as I stated, the
configuration was a nightmare, and the connections were flaky.

-Keith Morgan
Systems Security Engineer
Terradon Communications 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonn Martell [mailto:martell () ucs ubc ca]
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2001 2:44 PM
To: Tony Chryseliou
Cc: firewall-wizards () nfr com
Subject: Re: [fw-wiz] VPN Appliance that works with Microsoft?



You might want to consider running Sonicwall or Watchguard with the VPN
both at your HQ and the remote office.  Nothing works with Microsoft's
proprietary implementation of IPSec (as far as I know). Unfortunately,
Microsoft is continuing the "embrace and enhance" stuff. :-(

Sonicwall has a wide range of products with the remote office versions
costing less than $1K, they have also added "High Availability" for
firewall redundancy and load balancing.  This is fairly recent and we
haven't had a chance to look at it.

We are currently in the process of evaluating Sonicwall (& Watchguard)
and
so far, I'm very impressed (especially with the latest code).

Maintaining the remote Sonicwalls is possible via the Global Management
Systems.  I agree, you wouldn't want to support non-appliances at remote
sites, there is much less that can go wrong with the appliances.

If anyone has a complete evaluation of what appears to be the two
leaders
(Sonicwall / Watchguard) in this area (firewall appliances for the
Small/Medium size businesses), please let me know. It might save me some
effort :)

My feeling at this point is that Sonicwall has a much better set of
features and products but it seems all the trade mags are concentrating
on
Watchguard....

On a somewhat related note: Does anyone have any first hand experience
with Checkpoint's "SmallOffice" based products.  I haven't seen it live
yet but the manuals from intrusion.com don't give a warm feeling, seems
to
be a hurried product to fill a gap with Checkpoint products (remote
office
protection) but it seems that a LOT of important features are missing
(in
comparison with the full Checkpoint product); maybe it's just the
manual...

   Jonn Martell, UBC

 On Thu, 25 Jan 2001, Tony Chryseliou wrote:

> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 17:25:32 -0500
> From: Tony Chryseliou <TonyC () bgls com>
> To: firewall-wizards () nfr com
> Subject: [fw-wiz] VPN Appliance that works with Microsoft?
>
> We're considering setting up an RRAS server to do VPN work and would
like
to
> know if a VPN appliance (Sonic, Watchguard, etc.) out there works with
L2TP
> with IPSec encryption. The idea is to establish SOHO to HQ VPNs, but
we
> don't want to have a full blown server in each office to maintain.
>
> Thanks,
> TC
> _______________________________________________
> firewall-wizards mailing list
> firewall-wizards () nfr com
> http://www.nfr.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards

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