[lug] VPN suggestions

[D. Stimits]

Jason Vallery wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I know various components of this question have been covered recently, 
> so I apologize ahead of time for the duplication.  Even reading over 
> all the discussions I haven't been able to come up with a good 
> solution for my VPN needs.  I thought I would toss my situation out 
> here and see if I can get some good comments on what would work best 
> for me.
>
> I have 3 servers, in 3 physical separate locations all running CentOS 
> 4.3.  Two of the servers sit in data centers and have their own 
> dedicated IP addresses behind IP tables.  These boxes are doing 
> generally mundane things like email and web serving.  I have one 
> additional server that I use for testing and development that sits in 
> my house.  In my house I have a standard plain old cable connection 
> from Comcast, connected to a WRT54G running the latest Sveasoft 
> firmware (which has VPN capabilities built in).  Behind that sits the 
> server, and all of my desktop machines (a blend of OS X and Windows).  
> I've been playing with Hamachi and I like it.  I really only have two 
> major complaints about it, and those are that every client in the 
> network must also have the Hamachi client running, and that the 
> clients communicate over a separate "internal" IP address and I can't 
> seem to do name resolution.
>
> My ideal solution would be something that:
>
>     *  Links my 3 servers together
>     *  Bridges my server at home to my local LAN (allowing me to
>       connect from within my home network without client software)
>     *  Everything would be nicely encrypted
>     *  I could access the same VPN from remote locations like coffee
>       shops, and route my Internet traffic out of one of the servers
>       in the data center (or my house if I have to, but the connection
>       to my production servers is obviously much faster)
>

I'm also interested in this...I've come to the conclusion though that 
there probably isn't a wireless access point which can natively run a 
radius server (unless perhaps there is a device that can have linux on 
it and which has two interfaces which can bridge?), at least not for the 
sub-$1000 range (and no, I would not buy one for anywhere near that :P).

But...if a wireless access device were to require passing through a 
dedicated firewall device which in turn *does* have something like IPsec 
and/or radius, this would be just as good. Can anyone recommend a 
dedicated firewall device that runs a radius server natively, and which 
can bridge? If not, are there recommendations on IPsec dedicated 
firewall devices that play nicely with linux?

D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net