b.cognosco

Personal VPN's without Windows.

» Since you've probably got more than one computer at home anyway I would be inclined to look into one of the cable/DSL switches that also provides VPN.  For example, the cable router that I could end up buying is the LinkSys BEFSX41 which includes built in VPN capability.  At the back of my mind not running this through Windows hopefully exposes you to less risks.

I'd appreciate more informed opinions though.

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

This looks like a good solution as long as you don't need (want?) wireless access -- especially since the LinkSys is only $120 at BestBuy. It looks like this unit does everything you need to manage a personal VPN.

But I just purchased the D-Link DI614+, with mostly the same features of the LinkSys, sans the VPN endpoint, but with a wireless acces point built in. It supports multiple IPSec or PTP passthru connections, just not a VPN endpoint. So Scott Walker recommended this:

Here's how to do it in software on a single-diskette Linux box with two Ethernet cards:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4772

[...]This article shows you how to set up, at minimal expense, a working VPN gateway that uses the IETF's (Internet Engineering Task Force) IPSec (internet protocol security) specification. IPSec is an open standard and is supported by virtually all major firewall software and hardware vendors, such as Lucent, Cisco, Nortel and Check Point. This package will give you a widely interoperable IPSec that uses the de facto standard 3DES encrypted, MD5-authenticated site-to-site or point-to-site VPN. You should be able to do this without resorting to a full Linux distribution or recompiling a standard Linux kernel with a kernel IPSec module.[...]

Either way it looks like about another hundred $$ -- whether for another router or two ethernet cards and an old 486 PC. I'm inclined to go the Linux route and put it just behind my router, but first I have to learn enough about Linux to do it (or con someone into doing it for me.)