far away mac » VPN

Tutorial: Setup VPN in Lion Server

Brian Stucki — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:33:34 +0000

When Lion Server was released, setting up a VPN server became a little more difficult. We’ve put together a tutorial on setting up the VPN service in Lion Server.

It can be found here.

Shimo: A Powerful VPN Client For Macs

Brian Stucki — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:27:04 +0000

I know we have a lot of customers who setup a VPN on their Mac mini so they can connect to the internet thru it while on the road.

If you use your Mac regularly with a VPN, Shimo will be worth a look. “Shimo supports almost every VPN protocol that is currently used. Next to the widely used CiscoVPN, Shimo easily handles OpenVPN and standard compliant IPSec connections. PPTP and L2TP are no problem at all either. With Cisco’s new AnyConnect protocol and the zero-configuration protocol Hamachi the list of supported connection types becomes even longer.”

Macworld did a nice post on Shimo recently so you can read all about it there. Or, just head over to the developer’s site to download a trial or purchase a license. (€12.95)

iVPN: Easy VPN Setup on a Mac

Brian Stucki — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:30:23 +0000

Mac OS X has a great VPN server built into it. If you use the Server version, it provides a nice GUI to setting it up. Unfortunately, regular OS X doesn’t have that GUI. This is where iVPN comes is quite useful.

If you want to take advantage of the security that a VPN offers, iVPN makes it quite easy to setup a VPN. “All you have to do to set it up is to enter the user name and password that you want your VPN clients to use, the IP address range you want to give to your clients and then click start server. iVPN will handle all the other settings and start the VPN server.” Of course, this is especially useful if you have a Mac server that is always on and available at a static address.

iVPN is £14.99 and is available here.

HamachiX: Quick, Secure VPN

Brian Stucki — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:34:34 +0000

Hamachi is a VPN application that will allow you to set up VPN connections thru firewalls easily. HamachiX is the Mac OS X front-end for it.

I’ve used this connection on the road to be sure that my data was transferring securely. This will also allow you to connect to network drives or printers that may be on your home or office network.

HamachiX is free and can be downloaded from the HamachiX website.