Openswan: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks published.

This book is a comprehensive guide to using Openswan for building both
basic and industry size, military strength VPNs for medium to very
large organizations. Written by the core developers, this practical
book is all you need to use Openswan to build any VPN infrastructure
you may need. The authors have covered the latest developments and
upcoming issues. This book will not only help you build the VPN you
need, but also save you a lot of time.

More details about the title are available at:
http://www.packtpub.com/openswan/book
ISBN:1904811256

On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:50:10 -0700, Kshipra wrote:

> This book is a comprehensive guide to using Openswan for building both
> basic and industry size, military strength VPNs for medium to very large
> organizations.

How does Openswan compare to OPenVPN? OpenVPN seems more popular.

Dan

Dan N wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:50:10 -0700, Kshipra wrote:
>
>
>>This book is a comprehensive guide to using Openswan for building both
>>basic and industry size, military strength VPNs for medium to very large
>>organizations.
>
>
> How does Openswan compare to OPenVPN? OpenVPN seems more popular.
>
> Dan


OpenVPN transfers IP (using tun interface) or Ethernet (using tap
interface) packets/frames on top of the already present IP protocols
(TCP or preferably UDP).

OpenSwan transfers the internal network packets using the IPSec
protocol. It is more complicated to set up than the simpler
transport provided by OpenVPN. Additionally, there are sticky
issues with IPSec and NAT.

HTH

--

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi

On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 14:51:24 +0000, Tauno Voipio wrote:

> Additionally, there are sticky issues with IPSec and NAT.

I guess the question I was asking is if OpenVPN was better, and the answer
seems to be yes.

Dan

Dan N wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 14:51:24 +0000, Tauno Voipio wrote:
>
>
>>Additionally, there are sticky issues with IPSec and NAT.
>
>
> I guess the question I was asking is if OpenVPN was better, and the answer
> seems to be yes.
>
> Dan


It is a personal valuation. I dropped IPSec and CIPE in
favour of OpenVPN and UDP transport on it. OpenVPN is
much less invasive on te kernel than both of the older
ways of achieving VPN. The whole interaction with the
kernel is in the tun/tap special network driver.

Though it's security by obscurity, I'm not going into
encryption details - there are many options available,
each with its pro's and con's.

--

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi

Dan N wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:50:10 -0700, Kshipra wrote:
>
> > This book is a comprehensive guide to using Openswan for building both
> > basic and industry size, military strength VPNs for medium to very large
> > organizations.
>
> How does Openswan compare to OPenVPN? OpenVPN seems more popular.
>
> Dan

See this link:
http://software.newsforge.com/softwa...2/164231.shtml

I think the only advantage IPSec could have over OpenVPN is that of
its "standard" tags. In practice that's not the case and different
IPSec implementations have compatibility issues, so OpenVPN is more
standard in real world (Linux, Mac, Windows and Unix versions of
OpenVPN will interact with no problem.).