Anyone using OS X's native VPN client?

[deckeda]

My wife has a VPN client provided by her work but we were curious about how OS X does it.

But the fields to fill in look different, and her IT's department is Macintosh ignorant.

The 3rd party app has what I expected to see, an IP or server address name to input and the company's domain name along with the usual userid and password. We were told to use the IP address with :4300 port number appended, which we did.

But in OS we're first asked to choose the VPN type from a popup and "service name" before proceeding. Is the service name anything we want, just a name for the connection we decide upon?

And since VPN is a "new connection type" in the Network sys prefs, how will it know if we're going through Ethernet or WiFi, etc?

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One annoyance with using the 3rd party VPN client is that when you disconnect from it, the Mac still is setup to use the company's domain and so web sites fail until we manually renew DHCP so that it once again finds our ISP.

[lazydays]

I have never successfully connected to a vpn server using apple's software. VPN Tracker is much better and only $50.


http://www.equinux.com/us/products/vpntr...index.html

[decay]

connecting FROM a Mac or TO a Mac?

[deckeda]

She's got a MBP running Lion. The corporate thing is Windows. She was using MS Remote Desktop from home. It works OK but they are moving away from that and wanting remote users to VPN to access shared drives and so on.

With Remote Desktop everything was peachy, she'd see the virtual Windows desktop and use whatever was there. With VPN of course she'll need the actual drives mapped and native apps (if they exist) setup from IT, if possible.

The way things are going I may wind up having to put Win7 on there. Not ready to make it that easy for her IT just yet. They should do a modicum of basic homework first IMO.

[onthedownlow]

Use it everyday. What is the 3rd party app that they use? A Cisco client, perhaps?

The service name is just your own description - whatever you want.

Ignore the 'new connection' within the Network pref...OS X just puts everything network-related there. The VPN client will use whichever your current Internet connection is, at the time, and tunnel through that.

On your VPN type, just choose one of them to continue setting it up (L2TP over IPSec or PPTP...odds are that it is PPTP, that they use, so try that first).

Leave the encryption settings to 'Automatic' and fill out the rest that you need (server name, username/password) and then see if it will connect. If it doesn't, make sure the details are correct and try again. If it doesn't, then switch it over to the other VPN type and try again.

For convenience, also make sure to check the 'Show VPN status in menu bar'.

[deckeda]

Thanks! We'll try it!