What's the most OS X & Linux friendly firewall/VPN appliance?

[tace]

Looking to acquire a new firewall/VPN appliance for a small company and it needs to be able to support OS X and Linux users without the hassle of installing a 3rd party VPN client. Obviously, cheaper the better.

Thanks to all for your help.

 

[Westside guy]

Looking to acquire a new firewall/VPN appliance for a small company and it needs to be able to support OS X and Linux users without the hassle of installing a 3rd party VPN client. Obviously, cheaper the better.

Thanks to all for your help.

I'm not a VPN wizard, but I do know you need to provide more information. IPSEC or SSL? Which distro(s) of Linux?

I would guess you're out of luck re: Linux doing this out-of-the-box, but there are third party solutions available. I've done a little dabbling, and the problem I've found (and maybe someone who knows more can correct me if I'm wrong) is while SSL VPNs have somewhat more mature support on Linux than IPSEC VPNs, they're a pain to get working on OS X - you end up having to patch the kernel, which is outside most peoples' comfort level. OS X does have IPSEC support built-in though.

The problem here is we (at my job) are still in the "look at it and see if we want to do this at some point" phase regarding VPNs - so hopefully someone with actual practical experience will weigh in.

 

[Urdam]

I agree

 

[tace]

IPSec or otherwise doesn't matter. The main importance is that I don't have to support other users or have to jump through hoops to have a connection. The Linux distros are only RedHat.