Can router transmit multi-cast-packets to VPN group clients

[bapatsubodh]

Hi,

Can router be configured to act as Remote VPN server for windows clients over internet , and can it be configured to transmit multi cast packets to VPN clients those are in the VPN pool with whom VPN server / router has formed secure tunnel.

Thanks

Subodh

[Richard Burts]

I am not sure that I fully understand your question. But I believe that the essential part of the anser is that IPSec is for unicast IP traffic only. So if you are talking about an Access VPN from a Windows client to a router then I believe that the answer is no it can not send multicast to the clients. I have implemented router to router VPNs using GRE with IPSec and one of the advantages of this is that it does support multicast. Cisco has recently introduced a new feature of Virtual Tunnel Interface which appears to be able to send multicast without requiring GRE. I do not yet have experience with this so I can not say how well it works. So there are ways to support multicast for router to router VPN but I do not know of a way to do it for router to client Windows VPN.

HTH

Rick