Linksys Mail
I’ve been receiving some email about my Linksys articles. Some are general BEFVP41 questions, but more than I would’ve guessed are about my network configuration. The price is low enough, and the setup effort is low compared to the equivalent Linux system, so I guess it’s not surprising.
The setup described in that article has remained the same since I wrote about it, while other tweaks I’ve made have been on the firewall and other systems on the network. The VPN has been working flawlessly for two months. Even with temporary network outages, the tunnel has re-connected automatically, and for the most part I don’t even pay attention to it any more. Network configuration changes on the office end have forced a manual trip to the Linksys box’s admin page to disconnect and re-connect, which wasn’t surprising. And I’m still on the 1.39.64 firmware.
The only thing I need to tweak during my day-to-day activities is when I unplug from the wired net, and plug in an 802.11b card so I can roam around the house, my connection going through an access point. The static route on my Win2k laptop for VPN traffic gets dropped because my interface changes. I have a little script I wrote that checks what my new IP address is, and if I’m at home on either interface, it sets up the custom route. Otherwise, I’m somewhere “else” and the home Linksys box isn’t available. It’s still very convenient.
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Jim, I’ve just setup a couple of BEFVP41s to link my home and office. I had been using just one in the office and had been connecting to it from home on my laptop using the GreenBow VPN client (which seemed to work quite well).
I then bought a second box for home to maintain a permament tunnel, and yes they do seem to work quite well, keeping the connection alive etc.
I’m not achieving great speeds over the VPN, using 512kbs ADSL connections on either end, but may play with different encryption methods to try and boost this (and then ultimately upgrade to 1Mb or 2Mb!)
I also use the laptop on a WLAN at home, and I’ve setup my wireless router (also a Linksys) not to provide DHCP or NAT and just let me see through it to the VPN router behind it (which provides my DHCP addresses and now acts as my main NAT firewall for the network.
This means I can be connected directly to the cabled network or connect via wireless and still get a DHCP address off the BEFVP41 which acts as my main router and have access as normal to my remote office network.
Your talk of static routes made me think perhaps you could use a similar simpler setup? (Of course you sound like a smart guy so I’m sure this is not something you haven’t considered!)
Anyway, great blog. Interesting reading!
Comment by Chris — 4/12/2005 @ 2:53 pm