NETGEAR UTM25EW-100NAS, UTM25-100NAS Chapter Virtual Private Networking Using SSL Connections

Chapter 8

Virtual Private Networking

Using SSL Connections

The UTM provides a hardware-based SSL VPN solution designed specifically to provide remote access for mobile users to their corporate resources, bypassing the need for a pre-installed VPN client on their computers. Using the familiar Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, commonly used for e-commerce transactions, the UTM can authenticate itself to an SSL-enabled client, such as a standard Web browser. Once the authentication and negotiation of encryption information is completed, the server and client can establish an encrypted connection. With support for up to 13 dedicated SSL VPN tunnels, users can easily access the remote network for a customizable, secure, user portal experience from virtually any available platform.

This chapter contains the following sections:

•“Understanding the SSL VPN Portal Options” on this page.

•“Using the SSL VPN Wizard for Client Configurations” on page 8-2.

•“Manually Configuring and Editing SSL Connections” on page 8-17.

Understanding the SSL VPN Portal Options

The UTM’s SSL VPN portal can provide two levels of SSL service to the remote user:

•SSL VPN Tunnel. The UTM can provide the full network connectivity of a VPN tunnel using the remote user’s browser instead of a traditional IPsec VPN client. The SSL capability of the user’s browser provides authentication and encryption, establishing a secure connection to the UTM. Upon successful connection, an ActiveX-based SSL VPN client is downloaded to the remote PC to allow the remote user to virtually join the corporate network.

The SSL VPN client provides a point-to-point (PPP) connection between the client and the UTM, and a virtual network interface is created on the user’s PC. The UTM assigns the PC an IP address and DNS server IP addresses, allowing the remote PC to access network resources in the same manner as if it were connected directly to the corporate network, subject to any policy restrictions that you configure.

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v1.0, September 2009