Windows – Reasonably Secure Alternative to Poptop PPTP Server for Ubuntu server and Windows clients

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I have a poptp server running on a old Fedora server but I'm upgrading to an Ubuntu 10.04 server.

I was wondering if there are any good, reasonable secure alternatives to poptop that in can install on our new Ubuntu server as a way to get VPN access from Windows clients (XP and 7) to get remote access into our Intranet.

We only use the VPN to access files located inside the network; we do not need to use it as a proxy/gateway.

I've looked into OpenVPN but it seemed way too complicated and I would prefer something built into Windows. A Windows 7 only solution is OK.

Edit:

Windows 7 has PPTP, L2TP/IPSec, SSTP, and IKEv2 built in and Windows XP has PPTP and L2TP/IPsec built in. Which of these can easily be served by an host on our Ubuntu server?

Best Answer

I looked into various Linux-based VPN solutions for a project and found a lot of pros and cons with each. I ended up with OpenVPN because it's fast, flexible and -- using the built-in scripts and examples in /usr/share -- easy to setup. Not a huge fan of the Windows client for OpenVPN, but it's getting better.

There's also OpenSwan/strongSwan (successors to FreeSwan) if you want to go mobile IPSec, but this isn't going to be any easier than OpenVPN. However, you do get to use the very nice (and open/free) Shrewsoft VPN client that runs on all major OSes.

There's no stopping you from using poptop though; it's still widely-used and supported in the Ubuntu repository as far as I know.

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