NetGear unveils dual-band firewall with VPN security
NetGear has unveiled the SXRN3205 ProSafe Wireless-N Virtual Private Network (VPN) firewall, which the company claims is the first to combine dual band 5.0/2.4GHz Wireless-N with SSL and IPsec VPN. The product is designed for small businesses that require increased wireless performance and high security. The company has integrated its Dual WAN Gigabit SSL VPN firewall with a dual-band Wireless-N a...
published on Wednesday, the 8. October 2008, macintosh-news-network
?iPhone 3G wins over BlackBerry? in battle for enterprise users
?Apple?s iPhone 2.0 OS brought Cisco VPN, Exchange Server e-mail, and native custom applications to Apple?s devices, bringing utility to the mix to make the iPhone an enterprise shoo-in,? reports Tom Yager (infoworld.com) in his comparison of the iPhone to the Blackberry. ?All of the iPhone?s standard applications are beautiful, responsive, and stable.? And, he says, ?iPhone?s deal maker is the App Store.?
published on Wednesday, the 8. October 2008, apple-hot-news
Greatly reduce CPU usage with Cricket Wireless modem
If any of you are Cricket wireless modem users, you know there is a huge problem with the software you download from their support site. When I first used it, my Activity Monitor was reading an average of 85% CPU usage on both cores! This is completely unacceptable for any reason, so before I returned the USB modem they provide, I figured out the following little trick. Having done this, my CPU load is now under 2% on my 2.4GHz iMac. The software to control your internet access is not doing anything than setting up a VPN, and they can get away with such poorly written programs because the download installs a modem script. So, once you have the script, why not give that software the slip? Here's what I did: Download and install the software on your Mac. You want to make sure that the modem is going to properly connect to the internet in the first place. Go to System Preferences » Network, and add a VPN. Choose L2PTP over IPSec as the type, and n...
published on Tuesday, the 23. September 2008, macosxhints
A fix for 'Error 51' with the Cisco VPN Client
To connect to Macworld's servers, I use the Cisco VPN Client (version 4.9.01). While this works well most of the time, I occasionally receive this error message when I launch the app: Error 51: Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem. Please make sure that you have at least one network interface that is currently active and has an IP address and start this application again. When this occurs, I definitely have an active network interface that has an IP address, so it's quite clearly not an issue with my machine's settings. The problem seems to be related to sleeping the Mac after using the Cisco VPN Client; this sometimes (but not always) will lead to the above error message when I next try to use the VPN Client. What makes it extra frustrating is that it's not consistent -- the app will work for days at a time through sleep and wake cycles, then spontaneously decide it's time for error 51 to appear. I used to think rebooting wa...
published on Tuesday, the 2. September 2008, macosxhints
Make Apple TV work with Checkpoint VPN
Maybe I should have known, but I recently had my Apple TV just stop showing up in iTunes. After following all of the troubleshooting tips at Apple's Support site, it crossed my mind that my new Checkpoint VPN might be the problem.After some searching, I found this page that describes turning off the Checkpoint VPN SecureClient Security Policies. In your Checkpoint VPN SecureClient menubar drop-down menu, select Tools » Disable Security Policy.I guess the security policy put in place pretty much blocks all incoming traffic to your Mac, including many Bonjour requests such as those from the Apple TV.
published on Wednesday, the 27. August 2008, macosxhints
Set the Cisco VPN group password on iPhone 2.0
If you're trying to configure the iPhone 2.0's built-in Cisco VPN client, you may be stymied by the lack of a place to type your group password. It's there, but labeled "Secret." Put your group password there, and you should be good to go.
published on Friday, the 18. July 2008, macosxhints
Create the illusion that Bonjour works over a VPN
If you?re a Mac user who often uses VPN connections, you?ll notice one very disappointing thing about connecting to your corporate or personal network over such tunneled connections: typically, Bonjour-style addresses (such as computer-name.local) don?t work. This is because multicast DNS (or mDNS) doesn?t work over a tunnel. Though there are ways to get it functional, they are pretty complicated and require that you have a lot of esoteric networking knowledge. However, if the services you typically access via Bonjour use static IP addresses, then there is one age-old networking technique you can use to simulate Bonjour-style naming conventions without actually using Bonjour. This, of course, is the /etc/hosts file. The /etc/hosts file is a simple, static, text-based mapping of computer names to IP addresses. It does exactly what Bonjour does, except it doesn?t keep itself up to date when things change. Of course, if you?re us...
published on Friday, the 27. June 2008, macosxhints
Limit OS X Server VPN connections to one per user
VPN in Mac OS X Server (all versions, I think) allows users to have as many sessions from as many different computers as they want to the VPN server. I didn't like this, so I tried to find a way to restrict them to only one session. I tried looking at plists, thinking maybe Apple had some hidden option for this, but I couldn't find it. I then dug around in man files for vpn and pppd and such, and found something of interest in pppd's man page:/etc/ppp/auth-up A program or script which is executed after the remote system successfully authenticates itself. It is executed with the parameters: interface-name peer-name user-name tty-device speed Note that this script is not executed if the peer doesn't authenticate itself, for example when the noauth option is used. Great! All I need now is some code and a way to find out which users are currently onlin...
published on Thursday, the 26. June 2008, macosxhints
Check Point VPN-1 support for iPhone
Check Point Software Technologies on Monday announced Check Point VPN-1 support for the iPhone, allowing the popular device to access virtual private networks through its gateways. Check Point VPN-1 now supports the L2TP client found in all current and future iPhone versions to provide immediate IPsec VPN access to corporate servers. Check Point VP...
published on Tuesday, the 3. June 2008, macintosh-news-network
VPN connections in VMware virtual machines
VMware Fusion provides two options for the network connections in a virtual machine: direct (Bridged) and by sharing the host?s connection (NAT). I have found that if you want to connect to a VPN from within a virtual machine, you must use the Bridged option. If you want the virtual machine to use the Mac?s VPN connection, you must use the NAT option. I have also found that connecting to the VPN from within a Windows Vista virtual machine on my MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5.2 is not reliable -- the connection frequently drops out. However, if I connect using the host machine (NAT), the virtual machine uses that connection perfectly, and I have had no disconnection issues.
published on Wednesday, the 28. May 2008, macosxhints