Openswan: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks: Learn from the developers of Openswan how to build industry standard, military grade VPNs ... with Windows, MacOSX, and other VPN vendors [Paperback]

Paul Wouters (Author), Ken Bantoft (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1904811256 | ISBN-13: 978-1904811251 | Publication Date: February 13, 2006

This book is a comprehensive guide to using Openswan for building both basic and industry size, military strength VPNs for medium to very large organizations. Written by the core developers, this practical book is all you need to use Openswan to build any VPN infrastructure you may need. The authors have covered the latest developments and upcoming issues. This book will not only help you build the VPN you need, but also save you a lot of time. Network administrators and any one who is interested in building secure VPNs using Openswan. It presumes basic knowledge of Linux, but no knowledge of VPNs is required.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul Wouters has been involved with Linux networking and security since he co-founded the Dutch ISP 'Xtended Internet' back in 1996, where he started working with FreeS/WAN IPsec in 1999 and with DNSSEC for the .nl domain in 2001.He has been writing since 1997, when his first article about network security was published in LinuxJournal in 1997. Since then, he has written mostly for the Dutch spin-off of the German 'c't magazine', focusing on Linux, networking and the impact of the digital world on society. He has presented papers at SANS, OSA, CCC, HAL, Blackhat and Defcon, and several other smaller conferences.He started working for Xelerance in 2003, focusing on IPsec, DNSSEC, Radius and delivering trainings. Ken Bantoft started programming in 1988, and successfully avoided doing it as a full time job until 2002. He opted instead to focus on Unix, Networking, and Linux integration. Beginning at OLS2002, he started working alongside the FreeS/WAN project, integrating various patches into his own fork of their code - Super FreeS/WAN, which is now known as Openswan.He currently lives in Oakville, ON, Canada, with his wife Van, two cats and too many computers.Ken started working for Xelerance in 2003 where he works mostly on IPsec, BGP/OSPF, Asterisk, LDAP and Radius.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (February 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904811256
• ISBN-13: 978-1904811251
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #487,063 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complete Guide for Installing and Configuring Openswan, March 31, 2006

By 

Charles Rutledge (Atlanta GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Openswan: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks: Learn from the developers of Openswan how to build industry standard, military grade VPNs ... with Windows, MacOSX, and other VPN vendors (Paperback)

I bought this book to setup Openswan IPSec on Linux server that would connect to a Watchguard Firebox. Since the Linux distro was Slackware, I got to go through the entire build and setup procedure (which, dispite the author's distain for Slackware, was not as bad as seems). The book covers theory and operation of IPSec in general as well as the details of installing (from binary distributions and source tar balls) and configuring Openswan IPSec and overcoming the bumbs encountered getting it all running.

Included are details and problems of making Openswan work with other IPSec devices, such as Watchguard (in my case), Cisco and Microsoft's IPSec implementation. And when dealing with connecting to Microsoft, they deal with the problems you will encounter and how to work through them.

If you are planning to setup IPSec on a Linux server using Openswan, you'll want this book at your side to help guide you through the entire process.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay book, but lots of gaps, March 8, 2007

By 

Chris Stark "Linux Admin" (Honolulu, HI, US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Openswan: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks: Learn from the developers of Openswan how to build industry standard, military grade VPNs ... with Windows, MacOSX, and other VPN vendors (Paperback)

After researching OpenSWAN on the Internet for several weeks, I kept running into this particular title. I figured it would be nice to have a desk reference for this software, as it is not exactly user-friendly, and the few web sites I was frequenting seemed to endorse the book. When the book arrived, my first impression was that it was a lot thinner than I would have expected. And for a good reason: there are not nearly enough configuration examples, and it seemed like an awful lot of steps were assumed as common knowledge. It's not that the book is a terrible book -- far from it. I would certainly recommend it to anyone wanting to attempt OpenSWAN. However, I would caution that it's not going to hold your hand through the setup, and you'll almost certainly need to supplement the book with examples and guides from the Web. Also, it's a bit on the pricey side considering the content (or lack thereof) -- for example, the monstrous "Official Samba HOWTO and Reference Guide" is comprehensive, enormous, and costs less -- it would have been nice if the Openswan book were a little more like that.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Cryptic, February 14, 2008

By 

S Kim (CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Openswan: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks: Learn from the developers of Openswan how to build industry standard, military grade VPNs ... with Windows, MacOSX, and other VPN vendors (Paperback)

Cryptic is the word to describe this book. When describing the protocols, the author couldn't decide how in-depth he should go. As a result, what you have is a very unbalanced treatment. Without more details, all the chapters on protocols are totally useless -- unless the reader is already very familiar with them. The author should have written in more detail or omitted the chapters on protocols totally.

Very wordy. No illustration. But this seems to be only book on Openswan. What a shame.