ssh tunnel and VPN
 

When creating a SSH Tunnel, is that the same as creating a VPN. Please clarify.

Security-wise, yes. Functionality-wise, no. But you can add functionality to your ssh tunnel with things like port forwarding (set up on client side), sshfs (client side), FreeNX (server and client side), proxying with squid (server side), etc.

So I could basically take a linux box and set it up like and exspensive Cisco 3000 VPN concentrator and it would serve the same functions correct. If that is the case then why dont more companies do that instead of paying thousands of dollars on another system?

No. I said you could "add functionality" to a ssh tunnel. But you can't add enough functionality to make it a "complete vpn solution suitable for a corporate environment". On the other hand, an ssh tunnel is probably good enough for most ordinary people trying to access their home LANs.

so for the big boys use a hardware VPN and leave SSH for the small business or home users!

To add to this query, i have some clients that are looking for linux solutions. At one point in time they were told that the VPN that they were to use had to be 128bit encryption.

What type of leverage would i get if i used putty to ssh into there server and then do a port redirect to a RDP session.

Does using putty allow for the same type of security?

Im confused. Please help.

cmac