MarkTTU
Lifetime Supporting Member
Over the last several years we've setup 25 or so VPNs at customer locations.
Initially we used a Netopia ENT-3386 router as a PPTP endpoint and it worked well. Unfortunately that router doesn't support DynDNS and we aren't always able to get a static IP at the customer location so we found a new router.
The next router we used was the NetGear FVS-336G. It was an SSL VPN router and promised no setup on the client computers because everything is just handled in a web page. That was great at first, but the way they were pulling it off was by taking advantage of security holes in Java so once Java got patched in all the browsers things stopped working. We found work-arounds for this so things can still work, but the work-arounds became more of a pain than just setting up a PPTP VPN... oh, and its a constant battle, find a work-around, Java gets patched, find another work-around, etc.
So now we're using a Cisco/LinkSYS RV-016 PPTP router. It does everything we want, is easy to setup, and so far they've been super reliable (been using them for about a year). The only problem is they only support 10 users and 2 concurrent connections. The latter isn't too big a deal as we typically don't have more than a couple of people logged in at any one time, but the former is becoming a major pain because just adding everyone that needs access from our company burns 6-7 accounts and the customer always wants a few accounts too so they can log in and check things out at their plant when they're at home or on the road.
At this point we've done tons of research into VPNs and the only practical VPN type to support across multiple operating systems (Win 95, 2k, 7, OS-X, etc) and mobile devices (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc) seems to be PPTP because PPTP support is built-in to virtually every device we've run across.
So does anyone know of a solid reliable router that supports DynDNS, can act as a PPTP server/end-point with >10 users (50 would be good), and is simple and easy to configure and manage? It might be nice to have support for more than 2 concurrent connections, but 5 or 10 would be plenty. Price is a concern, but not a major one as these VPNs save us hundreds of hours a year in drive time between customer sites.
Initially we used a Netopia ENT-3386 router as a PPTP endpoint and it worked well. Unfortunately that router doesn't support DynDNS and we aren't always able to get a static IP at the customer location so we found a new router.
The next router we used was the NetGear FVS-336G. It was an SSL VPN router and promised no setup on the client computers because everything is just handled in a web page. That was great at first, but the way they were pulling it off was by taking advantage of security holes in Java so once Java got patched in all the browsers things stopped working. We found work-arounds for this so things can still work, but the work-arounds became more of a pain than just setting up a PPTP VPN... oh, and its a constant battle, find a work-around, Java gets patched, find another work-around, etc.
So now we're using a Cisco/LinkSYS RV-016 PPTP router. It does everything we want, is easy to setup, and so far they've been super reliable (been using them for about a year). The only problem is they only support 10 users and 2 concurrent connections. The latter isn't too big a deal as we typically don't have more than a couple of people logged in at any one time, but the former is becoming a major pain because just adding everyone that needs access from our company burns 6-7 accounts and the customer always wants a few accounts too so they can log in and check things out at their plant when they're at home or on the road.
At this point we've done tons of research into VPNs and the only practical VPN type to support across multiple operating systems (Win 95, 2k, 7, OS-X, etc) and mobile devices (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc) seems to be PPTP because PPTP support is built-in to virtually every device we've run across.
So does anyone know of a solid reliable router that supports DynDNS, can act as a PPTP server/end-point with >10 users (50 would be good), and is simple and easy to configure and manage? It might be nice to have support for more than 2 concurrent connections, but 5 or 10 would be plenty. Price is a concern, but not a major one as these VPNs save us hundreds of hours a year in drive time between customer sites.