Hi

I am trying to configure strongswan on my dockstar runing debian, can some one please help me with that.
I would like to connect my iphone/ipad from the ATT network to my home network with the VPN client offered on these IOS devices ?

If this is not the right approach please give me some pointers so that i can achieve this.

BTW - i have openvpn running on my router running openwrt but would like to get a clientless VPN solution from my IOS devices.

Thanks
-Misc

I've recently been experimenting with some of the various VPN solutions on my dockstar. The quickest and by far the easiest to set up was PPTP. It works well on the dockstar and my iPhone over wireless or 3g (Verizon). I've been using it off and on for a week now.

I've done quite a bit of searching on the more secure L2TPN/IPSEC method (also supported directly with iOS). I haven't been able to get this to run successfully yet. I've tried various of combinations of Openswan, Strongswan, xl2tpn, l2tpn. I've been able to debug things a little, and get an initial ipsec connection established on my OSX Mac, but the L2TP phase always fails with "cannot connect to server". I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong with the configuration, but haven't been able to sort it out, after many many hours of tinkering. PPTP installs easily, and just seems to work for me.

A couple of the links I've been working from are below:
http://wiki.debian.org/HowTo/iPhoneVPNServer

http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/networking/openswan-l2tp.html

http://riobard.com/blog/2010-04-30-l2tp-over-ipsec-ubuntu/

https://peen.net/2009/04/linux-l2tpipsec-with-iphone-and-mac-osx-clients-2/


Again, these have all been good reading, as I'm new to the intricacies of VPN, but I've only been able to establish PPTP for now.

Good luck, and please post if you have any sucess.

Thanks Chris for taking the time to respond !

I have been reading all the above links and more trying to figure out on how to crack this setup. Unfortunately i have been unsuccessful.

While i do have OpenVPN configured on my OpenWRT router, i wanted to setup a clientless VPN for my IOS devices, i will continue trying and will update you if i am able to crack this.

Thanks
-Misc

I'll keep tinkering with it on my end as well. Currently in China at the moment, and using the PPTP option both on my iPhone and windows laptop. I still want to get L2TPN/IPSEC working.

I think at the moment, I'm leaning toward the options that don't involve using RADIUS, as I don't have multiple users to manage. In that case, it appears that xl2tpd would be the right choice.

I have some forward progress to report. I can confirm that I have a working setup for Openswan + xl2tpn that allows me to connect via IPSEC/L2TPN with my windows XP laptop. However, my iPhone looks like it's timing out when it tries to make a connection. PPTP still works for the iPhone though.

So far, I've been able to use existing packages without having to recompile anything.

Chris