[K12OSN] new principal ... wants new feature

[Dan Young]

On 7/3/07, Dimitri Yioulos <dyioulos at firstbhph.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 July 2007 4:07 pm, Dan Young wrote:
> > On 7/3/07, Kari Matthews <karisue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > My new principal says that at his last school, the IT guy had the server
> > > set up so that you could login from anywhere (like home) and have access
> > > to his documents (on the server).  He claims that the last school had
> > > some kind of web interface.  Hmmm.
> >
> > OpenVPN is free and runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac.
>
> I'm not trying to be disparaging (I use OpenVPN in our shop for certain
> users), but OpenVPN requires generation of certificates, and installation of
> software, those certs, and a config file on the client machine.  While I'm
> not in the edu field, I'm guessing that most principals would find this a
> bother, to put it mildly.  IMHO, a Web-based solution is probably best here.
> As an alternative to DL'ing, installing, and setting up SSL-Explorer (which
> we also use in our shop), Netgear makes an inexpensive (~$300) 25-user SSL
> VPN appliance (my suspicion is that it's driven by the commercial version of
> SSL-Explorer-same look and feel).  I've seen it in action, and it works very
> well.

Point taken. OpenVPN is to be set up with the help and guidance of
your local expert.

FWIW, the Windows installer can be custom built with the configuration
pre-loaded, so end-users of the OpenVPN client could potentially just
run an installer and go.

-- 
Dan Young <dyoung at mesd.k12.or.us>
Multnomah ESD - Technology Services
503-257-1562