What do you do when confronted with a technical problem that simply can’t be true? If someone came to you and told you they couldn’t send email outside a 500 mile radius
This one should bring a smile to face of any technical administrator. The joys of technology.
In my work and travel I have found an increasing need for VPN access to remote networks, including our offices, datacentres and client sites. In most cases these are over Cisco VPN which simplifies the process and makes it a breeze to connect new users.
Over the past while I have been trying out some other VPN products including the open source OpenVPN system for remote network access. Unfortunately the Cisco VPN client does not play with OpenVPN which requires another 3rd party application.
Until recently I have been using Tunnelblick, a small application built for OpenVPN connections which has great support for Tiger but many niggly bugs in Leopard. Recently I saw an article reviewing a new application called Viscosity, an OpenVPN Client for Leopard.
All I can say is wow. Viscosity whilst still in beta is an easy-to-use VPN client with automatic import for existing Tunnelblick connections. It connects to growl to provide notifications of VPN connection and disconnection and lives away at the top of my screen in silence when I don’t need it.
If you are working on Leopard and looking for an easy to use VPN solution I recommend looking into OpenVPN with Viscosity as your client-side application. Download a free beta copy from their site and give it whirl.