EasyVPN

Revision 3 as of 2006-06-03 21:10:41

Clear message

Summary

A proposal to bring easy VPN client setup to the Ubuntu desktop.

Rationale

Many users associated with some sort of organisation (school, university, company, etc.) need access to that organisation's internal network via VPN. Currently, setting up a VPN client requires the user to mess around with configuration files and command lines. This needs to improve.

Use cases

  • Anne wants to connect to the university's Cisco based VPN. She has found a .pcf file on the network but she doesn't know what to do with it.
  • Michael needs access to a secure part of the company network. A colleague has given him a configuration file for a pppd+pptp-linux combo, but neither of them feel that it should be this tedious.
  • Søren wants to set up a VPN system for his company based on free software, and he chooses OpenVPN. However, setting up the clients require a lot of manual work which takes time that could have been spent on developing cool free software.

Scope

At least Cisco VPN, PPTP, and OpenVPN connectivity should be included. Anything else is a bonus.

Design

With NetworkManager a new standard has been set for Linux networking that Just Works[tm]. VPN connectivity should work with NetworkManager.

Implementation and Code

NetworkManager CVS already contains vpn plugins for vpnc (Cisco VPN), pptp and OpenVPN. These need to be packaged and NetworkManager needs to be able to change the DNS settings accordingly.

Data preservation and migration

For the VPN types that already have a welldefined place to store configurations, any current configurations should be imported.

Outstanding issues

I've already packaged the VPN plugins. Many seem to have had bad experience with letting NetworkManager handle DNS. Any bugs in this area should be squashed. The configuration importers need to be developed.

BoF agenda and discussion

CategorySpec