This is a techie question. I'm looking for very detailed / technical why-type answers so please don't be afraid to include details.

I have a LinkSys Wireless Router access point. Product number: BEFW11S4. I am told by one of our network guys that it is not possible to run VPN over over this wireless AP because "it lacks the proper hardware". He can't give me the details or say what hardware is missing or what specifically this hardware does. However if I have a VPN server running on my network hardlined to my wireless AP he says I will not be able to create a VPN connection from lets say a laptop over this wireless connection.

Can anyone please provide technical or more detailed information as to what is missing from my linksys router?

thanks in advance,
jpbarto

Depends what kind of VPN? If you're using L2TP or PPTP as a tunnelling protocol than it should work fine (as long as the right ports on your router are open). There is seperate hardware that you can buy to do VPN (Cisco makes a great little stand alone VPN client, although I think it's like $300), but you shouldn't need it for just a basic VPN setup. Maybe your network guy is talking about a specific protocol that your company uses that requires a hardware setup?

slight

I use the same Linksys router to connect to my company from my laptop via a VPN (raptormobile) almost every day. As slight said, you do have to enable PPTP but that should be it unless your company requires a hardware VPN.

The wireless should have anything to do with it. If you can create a VPN connection over a wired connectino from that router, you should also be able to do it over wireless.

After some research and coming to this board I spoke some more with this guy and apparently he meant that it would not work with THEIR (the companies) VPN router. In other words (for some reason he thinks I want it on the backbone) this router will not integrate with their VPN router. Who cares about that... I think just to further piss him off I'll now create a VPN server to serve my clients (we're building a private test network) using as much opensource as I can find. Apparently there's lots of OpenSource VPN servers.

thanks for all the help guys.