What do I need for this?

[jlittle]

We have a business partner who has established a VPN using a PIX firewall. Our primary concern is to log in to their VPN, secondary is to connect two of our remote offices. We will connect up to 15 workstations using Win 9x and a Win 2000 server.

According to our client all we need is a PIX firewall to connect to them. However after reading about PIX do we need to purchase additional software or hardware to make this operate properly? We are considering the 515 or the 506.

I also read something about the Cisco Secure VPN client will not work with Windows 2000. Since our server is Windows 2000 is this a problem?

Anything else that you can think of so that this goes smoothly is appreciated.

Thanks,

John Little

[jbohla]

I can think of two options in this situation.

1. Put a PIX or a small Cisco router running IPSec/IOS Firewall software at each remote office and terminate the tunnels at the main site. This means you don’t have to run client software on the machines and your remote sites will have a firewall too.

2. Run the client software, but that will only run on the Win 98 machines right now. The W2K version is supposed to be out anytime now according to what I’ve heard. If you choose option 2 you could run PPTP for your encryption until the new software comes out. It is less secure but it’s built into Windows and the PIX will terminate it without any issues.

My advice would be to install option 1.

Hope this helps!