View Source: FreeSwan - Waikato Linux Users Group

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[FreeS/WAN|http://www.freeswan.org/], for [Free] Secure Wide Area Network, was the first project bringing IPSec to [Linux].

The program was initially written to reach the goal of OpportunisticEncryption by first "securing 5% of the Internet traffic against passive wiretapping in 1996 ~[..] we can secure 20% the next year, against both active and passive attacks; and 80% the following year. Soon the whole Internet will be private and secure."

As the method they used was a general purpose [IPSec] daemon, it became far more popular for [VPN] tunnels across public networks such as the Internet.

Unfortunately, come 2004, the 5% goal wasn't even reached, and so the project stopped. Two forks called OpenSwan and StrongSwan took up the code from where it left off.

FreeS/WAN's own kernel IPsec implementation is called [KLIPS], which was ported to the 2.6 kernel as part of the final 2.06 release.  FreeS/WAN and derivatives can also use the new [26sec] implementation.

!! ~FreeS/WAN Notes

<pre>
 Starting FreeS/WAN IPsec U2.01/K1.96...
 /usr/lib/ipsec/eroute: pfkey write failed, returning -1 with errno=22.
 Invalid argument, check kernel log messages for specifics.
</pre>

pfkey has changed between 1.96 and 2.x - upgrade your kernel IPSEC support to 2.x or higher.

* See http://vpn.ebootis.de/ for Windows interconnection information.

12 pages link to FreeSwan:

Last edited on Sunday, October 30, 2005 4:52:56 am by "AndreasSteffen"

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