Connecting to Netscreen Series (NetScreen-5) VPN with Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

(Followup to my NetScreen-5 from Ubuntu article) I recently struggled through the details of establishing a VPN connection from my Mac OS X desktop to a Juniper Networks Netscreen-5. Here's how I solved it. My Netscreen-5 was configured with some typical settings:Phase 1Pre-shared key "your-pre-shared-key-here"Encryption "pre-g2-aes128-sha"Phase 2 Encryption "g2-esp-3des-sha"To configure the client-side using an Ubuntu desktop, I used Racoon and KVpnc but didn't have the luxury of KVpnc on my Mac desktop so I had to manually edit my racoon.conf:

log debug2;path pre_shared_key "/etc/racoon/psk.txt";path certificate "/etc/racoon/certs";timer{ natt_keepalive 10 sec;}remote VPN.GATEWAY{ exchange_mode aggressive; nat_traversal on; ike_frag on; peers_identifier asn1dn; proposal_check obey; my_identifier user_fqdn "YOUR.EMAIL.ADDRESS"; proposal { encryption_algorithm aes; hash_algorithm sha1; authentication_method pre_shared_key; dh_group modp1024; }}sainfo address DESKTOP.IP.ADDRESS/32 any address VPN.GATEWAY/28 any{ pfs_group modp1024; encryption_algorithm 3des; authentication_algorithm hmac_sha1; compression_algorithm deflate;}listen{ adminsock "/var/run/racoon.sock" "root" "operator" 0660;}

Linksys WET54G bridge to Verizon FiOS ActionTec wireless access point

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

So my upgrade to Verizon FiOS included swapping my Linksys WRT54G access point for the Verizon branded ActionTec device that came with the FiOS install. This swap wasn't strictly necessary, but the ActionTec doubles as both the router and access point so I decided I might as well make use of the wireless capabilities since I have to keep it plugged in either way.The only problem I encountered was that my Linksys WRT54G bridge couldn't play nice with the ActionTec. Through trial and error I found that setting both devices to encrypt using WPA2-PSK using AES only (not the default TKIP+AES) resolved my issues.

Networks on technocracy

Connecting to Netscreen Series (NetScreen-5) VPN with Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)

Linksys WET54G bridge to Verizon FiOS ActionTec wireless access point