Re: Best VPN Appliance

[Scott Howard <scott () doc net au>]

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Blomberg, Orin P  (DOH)
<Orin.Blomberg () doh wa gov> wrote:
> Thanks for the information.  I am just going on what we have been
> formally told by our onsite Cisco engineers on several occasions.  It
> may be that they were misinformed, or that they are trying to make the
> sell for AnyConnect Licensing, but I had been going with the facts I
> had.

It was neither, at least not specifically on the side of your
engineers.  Cisco had absolutely no plans to release a 64-bit IPSec
client - not because they couldn't (they have had a working version
for some time), but because they have been trying to kill off the
product for years to try and migrate customers to their newer products
(ie, AnyConnect).  So your Cisco engineers were absolutely correct -
at the time - in saying that there would never be a 64 bit version.

Obviously it seems they have finally buckled to customer pressure (!)
and release a 64 bit version, which is good news for everyone except
whoever's job in Cisco it was to EOL the IPSec code.  It's unfortunate
that they didn't take the obvious approach and put IPSec into
AnyConnect when it first came out, which would have avoided all of
these issues.

(I used to work for Cisco in the Security Technology Business Unit,
but I don't any more so I'm obviously not speaking on behalf of anyone
other than possibly myself!)

  Scott.