IPSEC router for connecting to Watchguard XTM 23

[milkster]

Hi ALL,

I'm looking for a reliable router/device that can be placed at employees home offices to establish a site-to-site IPSEC connection to a Watchguard XTM 23 appliance in the office.

I'm looking for a device that would cost under $200 and have minimal babysitting after setup. I have about 5 employees that work from their home offices who will need a vpn tunnel to the office so that their IP phones can connect.

The phone system vendor has a VPN concentrator that they are proposing but its somewhat out of our budget for 5users and i'm hoping that there might be some better/cheaper solutions out there.

Any suggestions?

 

[thiggins]

Cisco / Linksys RV042 is generally well-regarded. If the Watchguard implements standard IPsec tunnels, it should work.

Folks seem to like Draytek routers, too. But U.S. availability / support isn't great.

 

[milkster]

Thanks for the reply.

What about the RVL200? That looks like another possible candidate. I don't really need the dual WAN since this will be sitting at peoples home offices.

This brings me to another question. The employees that work out of their home offices already have their own routers and modems for their home network. What is the best way on introducing this new device to their network?

Would i take their current router and replace it with the RVL200/RV042 and then create a VLAN for their office PC and phone and another VLAN for their home use?

 

[thiggins]

The RVL200 is a possibility as long as you need only one IPsec tunnel.

You would need to replace the current router in your employees' homes. If they need wireless, then you'd have to reconfigure their wireless routers to act just as APs.

You would definitely want to put office and home PCs on separate VLANs.

 

[milkster]

It looks like I will be picking up the RV042 since it has the best reviews out of all the linksys options that i've seen.

I have another question about VLAN's and VPN. On the RV042 when I establish a IPSEC connection back to our main office am I able to say that only VLAN 2 (for example) would use the IPSEC tunnel and VLAN 1 would not use the tunnel?

Would this be whats called split tunneling? I basically only want the users work PC to use the VPN tunnel and other pc's in the house that are not work related, on the other vlan, to not use the vpn tunnel. Is this possible?

 

[thiggins]

There are a few threads in the Cisco forums that I think answer your question.
http://homecommunity.cisco.com/t5/Wired-Routers/RV042-VPN-Questions/m-p/228898
http://homecommunity.cisco.com/t5/Wired-Routers/RV-042-Split-tunnel/td-p/5754