Customer Reviews

SSL Remote Access VPNs (Network Security)

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This book's goal is to serve as a complete guide to the SSL VPN technology and its implementation on Cisco SSL VPN-capable devices. It starts with the introduction to remote access VPN and SSL VPN technology before exploring the design consideration and Cisco SSL VPN family of products. The last part explains the SSL VPN implementation and configuration for Cisco ASA and Cisco IOS routers before it ends with the discussion on SSL VPN management.

This book is not for network beginners. Prior knowledge of VPN technology and familiarity with Cisco command line interface is needed as the book explains the remote access VPN technology concepts only briefly.

The book does come with a lot of screen shots and illustrations particularly on SSL VPN configuration chapters. It is trying to show readers how to configure SSL VPN thru ASDM but it also needs to provide CLI configuration so readers have alternative if they do not want to wade thru pages of pages of screenshots to configure SSL VPN.

The book also needs to provide more reference as the provided configurations will only help readers to get the SSL VPN up and running but are missing many optional SSL VPN configurations.

Although the book claims to be a complete guide, it does not even dedicate a chapter for SSL VPN troubleshooting guide. The troubleshooting section provided at the end of configuration chapters is quite meaningless.

The last chapter on SSL VPN management looks more like a brochure for Cisco Security Manager (CSM) and Cisco Access Control Server (ACS) product. It only covers a very general concept of SSL VPN policy configuration and provisioning using CSM and ACS with a reference at the back of the chapter to go to Cisco web site to look up on how to configure CSM and ACS.

All of this makes me confused on what target audience the book tries to cover as it is too complex for network beginners but not detail enough for people who already have extensive VPN knowledge. I find it interesting that the cover of the book indicates that it will serve as an introduction for SSL VPN but inside it claims to be a complete guide for SSL VPN technology.

In spite of these, I rate this book 4 out of 5 and still recommend the book. It has a lot of helpful information that can help readers to get familiar with SSL VPN concept and configuration quickly. Beginners who have no VPN knowledge should read Richard Deal's The Complete Cisco VPN Configuration Guide book first before moving on to read this. VPN network experts can read this to get the basic working knowledge of SSL VPN.

SSL Remote Access VPNs

Jazib Frahim, CCIE No. 5459

Qiang Huang, CCIE No. 4937

Right in the middle of a pretty big SSL VPN roll out here at my place of employment, Cisco Press released SSL Remote Access VPNs. They couldn't have had better timing, as there was a good deal I was still confused about.

First, let me get this clear from the start: I hate ASDM. It has its uses, like monitoring. The traffic and VPN monitoring interfaces are wonderful. However, as far as configuration goes, the command-line is preferable. That being said, 95% of this book, including configuration, revolves around ASDM.

The first chapter explains remote access VPNs, which should be pretty familiar to anyone with IPSec VPN experience. Nothing new here, but certainly a good refresher and a good way to build context for the rest of the book.

The next couple chapters focus on SSL VPN technology, as well as SSL VPN design considerations. Definitely a nice review, considering SSL is certainly not a new technology, but building high encryption VPNs using SSL certainly is.

Chapter 4 is just an overview of ASA appliances and IOS routers and their SSL VPN capabilities. It's only a few pages, so it's not exactly deep reading, but useful nonetheless.

Next is a chapter on SSL VPN on the ASA. Probably the best part of the book, it mostly focuses on clientless SSL VPN. It has a (too short) section on configuring the AnyConnect client. This is the part that I personally found the most useful, which is why I was disappointed that it was so short. Also included are Dynamic Access Policies (DAP), and a couple of deployment scenarios.

The next chapter is on SSL VPN on IOS routers. I have to admit, I only skimmed this chapter, as it just wasn't relevant to my deployment. But from what I could tell, it was just as thorough as the previous chapter, and possibly more so. It also included most of the SDM configuration in CLI form as well, and I have to wonder why the ASA chapter didn't have more CLI in it as well.

Finally, there is a short chapter on SSL VPN management. This chapter basically just shows you some of the monitoring interface in ASDM. Sadly, nothing in the way of CLI, but that's a pretty recurring theme in this book.

In conclusion, I would have to say this book is certainly worth picking up if you're planning on doing an SSL VPN roll out any time soon. The only real issue I had with the book was what I've already mentioned a few times, and that is the lack of CLI. I realize Cisco is really pushing SDM and ASDM, but they need to understand that network engineers are -not- point and click kind of people. Leave that to the MCSEs! ;)

- Chris

Most part of this book talks about how to configure VPN by using GUI interface without mention CLI at all, but seasoned network engineers only use CLI, with CLI you know exactly what you are doing.

This book is worthless to me.