VPN - Simple Solution

[ellisteph10]

Hi,

 

Im going to sound very dumb but I wanted some simple guidance on setting up a VPN that hopefully someone can help me with.

 

We have 12 external IP addresses available through our Cisco external router.

We have an internal network - Server 2012 / 2008 on a private subnet

 

What is the simplest solution going to give our users external access to our internal network via a VPN or remote connection?

 

Many thanks,

El

[dhicks]

What is the simplest solution going to give our users external access to our internal network via a VPN or remote connection?

 

Which users (staff / pupils / parents), and what do you want them to be able to do? We allow staff to connect to our Remote Desktop Services server, where they can access a desktop environment pretty much like the one they would see from any PC inside school. I'm also looking at OwnCloud to allow users direct access to files in a DropBox-like manner.

[ellisteph10]

Staff mainly, access onto the network mainly for SIMS and Network documents.

[mrcrazy04]

If you're wanting a full VPN, I've found OpenVPN to be quite easy to configure (although I've always run the server on a Linux box, so am not sure how well it would work if you need to out it on a Windows box). OpenVPN uses SSL to secure the connection, and if you run it over UDP with the ta.key setup, it won't give any handshake unless users have the key file, making it pretty much undetectable.

Alternatively, if your Cisco router is an ASA or similar, that should support IPSec, so you could have that act as your VPN endpoint. If that's the case I'd advocate using certificate based authentication, ideally with AD integration so certificates can be managed from the existing domain, and you could then have users authenticate with the certificate and their domain credentials.

Edited December 18, 2013 by mrcrazy04

[twin--turbo]

Consider very carefully the implications of using a VPN to give direct access to the network from devices that you have no control over ( especialy in terms of AntiVirus ).

 

Remote Desktop solutions are favourable.