VPN Router Recommendations?

[Welch]

Anyone have a recommendation on a good VPN router? Before I go diving into what looks decent, I'm open to suggestions. Dealt with lots of the Linksys E routers before, wondering if D-Link or Netgear perhaps have anything on par or better. Price range is $100-$200 each (needing two). Will be setup 300+ miles away connecting two offices with a Server 2008 R2 thrown into the mix. Very mild traffic as there will only be 3-5 machines using the connection tops.

Unsure of which VPN protocol I'm going to be using, also open to suggestions there as well. Any downside to using L2TP/IPSec over PPTP. I've also had to use RADIUS a few times, but was "informed" by someone that RADIUS transmit authentication in plain text , please tell me they were full of it

[chuckula]

Anyone have a recommendation on a good VPN router? Before I go diving into what looks decent, I'm open to suggestions. Dealt with lots of the Linksys E routers before, wondering if D-Link or Netgear perhaps have anything on par or better. Price range is $100-$200 each (needing two). Will be setup 300+ miles away connecting two offices with a Server 2008 R2 thrown into the mix. Very mild traffic as there will only be 3-5 machines using the connection tops.

Unsure of which VPN protocol I'm going to be using, also open to suggestions there as well. Any downside to using L2TP/IPSec over PPTP. I've also had to use RADIUS a few times, but was "informed" by someone that RADIUS transmit authentication in plain text , please tell me they were full of it

I speak from experience: Unless you need either: 1. A *BIG* VPN with full-blown IP-SEC or 2. A *tiny* VPN with PPTP for a very small number of clients, then you actually will be much better off setting up a simple SSL based VPN server using OpenVPN. The only thing you'll need for your router is to setup the routing table information for forwarding packets to and from the VPN host. I'm using a 6 year old notebook here at the office with OpenVPN and it has been extremely reliable. As a bonus: 1. It's open-source although there is commercial support if you want it. 2. It's cross platform with clients for Windows/Mac/Linux. 3. It's *much* easier to setup than a full-blown IP-SEC VPN, although probably a little more involved than a simple PPTP setup.

See: http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source.html

[Scrotos]

We have a Juniper connected to a SonicWall. That was "fun". And we tried to get the SonicWall connected to a Cisco.

It seems like every vendor has their own special terminology for VPN settings. And the Juniper was all CLI stuff which made the previous guy go insane. I don't have any specific recommendations beyond you might want to try to get the same model on both ends, that should hopefully make things less painful.

[Flatland_Spider]

If you're going to be doing a site-to-site VPN, the traditional method is to use an IPSEC VPN. It's going to have better throughput, and since it's going to be router-to-router, you'll just have to set it and forget it. This is what I would recommend.

SSL-VPNs are better for mobile users. The throughput is lower, compared to IPSEC VPNs, but they're easier to configure, which is a plus for remote users. SSL-VPNs could be used for site-to-site VPNs, but that's not what they're really designed for.

At a minimum I would get a router running DD-WRT. Ideally, you should spend some money and get some higher end gear.

Radius is for authentication. It's not a VPN technology, so it's not really applicable to the problem.

We have a Juniper connected to a SonicWall. And we tried to get the SonicWall connected to a Cisco.

Sonicwall stuff is fussy, and they want to do things their way.

[DLHM]

I have used a Linksys RV042, a pair actually ... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA00Y0BC5093
It's cheap, easy setup, and it worked great for quite a few years, and would use it again if I need it.

Edit. There is also the RV016 and the RV082... I have also used the 16 and it worked great.

[Ryu Connor]

I've also had to use RADIUS a few times, but was "informed" by someone that RADIUS transmit authentication in plain text , please tell me they were full of it

True statement with context. The connection is clear, but the passwords are hashed. Well, unless PAP is picked. TACACS+ does encryption.