VPN

As I've noted above, the RV082 is capable of two types of VPN's: point-to-point and mobile client (Figure 15). Both types are supported using the IPSec standard.

Figure 15: VPN Type selection

A point-to-point VPN assumes that you've got another router somewhere that acts as one end of the VPN tunnel, such as at a main office, and the other end of the VPN tunnel is at the remote office (or at home if you are a telecommuter). When you connect through the VPN's encrypted tunnel, you create your own private channel between the two routers that are at each end of the tunnel. Traffic that travels through that encrypted tunnel is protected from eavesdropping, even though you are using the public Internet.

A mobile client VPN works pretty much the same way, except one end of the VPN is the router and the other end is created using software running on a laptop or PC. The traffic is encrypted and is also protected from eavesdropping. And while the RV082 can support mobile client VPN's, its BYOC, that is, bring your own client. Linksys doesn't provide mobile user clients with the router. Popular clients are made by Cisco and Nortel, among others.

Creating VPN links are not for the newbs, and I don't have the bandwidth to write a tutorial on the joys of IPSec. At the risk of repeating myself, for a device in this pricepoint to be able to do 50 IPSec tunnels is little short of amazing. As you can see below, the firewall keeps track of the number of tunnels and the types of tunnels in use (gateway-to-gateway and mobile user).

Figure 16: VPN Tunnel summary

Figure 17 shows what the gateway-to-gateway setup screen looks like. You can choose multiple types of authentication to augment the security model (IP plus domain name, IP plus email address and dynamic IP versions with domain name or email address).

Figure 17: Gateway to Gateway setup