VPN
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) provides a mechanism whereby a machine on the Internet or the CS department's Untrusted Network can securely access our departmental Intranet. Typically, users connect to the VPN when they have access to a high speed internet connection, i.e. a cable modem or another university intranet, and require access to departmental resources which are not typically provided outside of the firewall.
Departmental VPN servers
There are multiple implementations of VPNs. At the moment, the department only supports the Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP). You should use the hostname pptp.cs.brown.edu when accessing the VPN from outside of the department and the hostname pptp.utcs.brown.edu when accessing the VPN from the CS department's Untrusted Network.Getting a PPTP client
Windows:This PPTP protocol is natively supported by Windows 2000 and Windows XP. In order to connect to our PPTP servers, you will need to ensure that you have 128bit encryption enabled. This is standard under WinXP, however, you Win2K users may need to download the Windows 2000 High Encryption Pack from Microsoft.
Linux:
There are numerous versions of the PPTP client for linux. The client which appears to be most heavily used is PPTP Client. NOTE: Tstaff has not installed nor tested any of these clients.
Setting Up
Account:Before using the VPN, you need to initialize your VPN account. To do this, log into a departmental linux or solaris machine and issue the command pptp-passwd. This program will prompt you for your YP passwd, this is your linux or solaris login password. It will then prompt you for a new password, which will be used solely for connecting to the VPN. You should select a decent password which is different than your login password. After entering your new password, it will ask you to type the password a second time for verification. If you should ever need to reset your VPN password, you can safely re-run the pptp-passwd program any time you are logged into a departmental linux or solaris machine.
Windows Configuration:
The following FAQs should lead you through step-by-step configuration of your windows client software:
Windows XP: Connecting to the VPN
Windows XP: Setting up the .cs.brown.edu domain suffix
Accessing maytag from VPN & Non-Domain Machines
Problems
If you've followed the directions here and still can't connect to the departments VPN, then contact someone on our technical staff for help.| Page Owner: Tstaff Account | Last Modified: Fri Jun 6 15:14:38 2008 |