Filed under: Enterprise, OS, Software
Setting up OS X as a VPN server
If you have
spent any time in the corporate world you have probably heard of VPN. Virtual Private Networks are a way to securely
connect to one network, say your work's network resources, from another place (like your home broadband connection). OS
X server has a VPN server baked right in that allows both OS X clients and Windows clients to connect securely, but how
do you set it up?Maclive.net has just posted a great article that explores setting up an OS X VPN server as well as connecting to that server from a Mac or a Windows box.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JPA said 5:14PM on 12-29-2005
Is there an Open Source (or free) VPN server for MacOS X client? I've used SSH: it's not the same.
What is MacOS X Server running behind the scenes for the VPN server?
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Paul Collins said 10:30PM on 1-21-2006
There are one or two open source VPN servers that may run on OS X, although I have not tried them. The common *nix VPN server for PPTP VPN is called PoPToP. Here's an L2TP server article: http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/networking/freeswan-panther.html
Instead of running a VPN server on a computer (which, among other things, really should have two ethernet connections), you might consider a separate VPN/firewall box to do the same thing - I see that there are TRENDnet VPN servers for only about $60.
OS X Server 10.4 offers both L2TP and PPTP service - I'm not sure what the implementation is.
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Paul Collins said 10:37PM on 1-21-2006
Ok, that article is not about Mac OS X VPN server, but about connecting from an OS X Client. What you want is probably vpnd on Mac OS X Client (I'll leave that for you to Google).
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