We recently got a Netgear FVS338 Prosafe VPN Firewall to as a replacement for our box that died. Here is an account of our attempt to get the VPN working on that device. The firewall box is housed in a LAN that we have in one of the local data centers miles from our main office. At the office we have Windows 7 64-bit, Ubuntu and Mac OS X clients for our web development team.<br>
<br>Getting the FVS338 working with the Windows XP client machines was not a problem at all--the software was included on the CD. Everything went downhill after that though. Netgear didn't seem to have a client ready for Windows 7 64-bit machines and there weren't any official clients for Ubuntu or Mac OS X. After some digging, I found the Shrew Soft Inc client that is supposed to work in Ubuntu and Mac OS X. The Mac OS X client connected fine but the Linux client never did, despite having the exact same configuration.<br>
<br>Some more searching on Netgear's website showed there is supposed to be a client for Windows 7 64-bit machines, but you can't freely download the thing; you have to sign up and register the serial number on the device first. However, our device was bolted to a wall halfway across town. No thanks to that, especially when OpenVPN is a free download any day of the week.<br>
<br>Vowing never to go through this crap again, we remotely installed Ubuntu server, along with OpenVPN, in a virtual machine and had all of the clients happily connected in half the time it took to do the running around for that Netgear box. Lesson learned: flexibility is key in a heterogeneous environment like ours, and open source, especially Linux, is way more flexible than anything else out there.<br>
<br>Why did we go with the Netgear box in the first place? Someone with control over the purse strings thought it would be easier and faster.<br>