Connection to a VPN IPSEC, possible ???

[magic_seb]

Hi,
is it possible to connect my BB 7100v (personnal webclient) to the VPN (IPSEC) of my company ?
I want to connect to the VPN to browse web pages from the web server inside the network of my company.

If it is possible, how to configure my BB, do i need a VPN client (wich one) ?

Thanks for your help, i don't find many informations on this subject....

Seb

[Talldog]

I don't think there's any such thing as an IPSec VPN client for BlackBerry.

[greenhut]

An SSL VPN would do the trick, but I imagine you are asking because IPSEC is what is currently available.

[hughvh]

Are you using a BES that is located behind the company's firewall?

[magic_seb]

I don't use a BES.

To connect to my company's VPN server,
i can use PPTP, L2TP or IPSEC

I don't find any VPN client for BB that uses these protocols...
Somebody know one ????

Thx for your help

Seb

[ia_praveen]

Im trying to do something similar as well, hook up the blackberry to work as part of a VPN. Would apprecaite any help on a suitable VPN client if there is such a thing.....

[ia_praveen]

Obviously someone has not attempted this before :( Any news from anyone will be helpful...

[Stern]

The only way I can think of is if you use connect through a laptop with your blackberry as a modem. Even then VPN over GPRS requires your VPN firewall to support NAT traversal.

I haven't seen any clients to run on the blackberry itself.

[hughvh]

I don't use a BES.

Too bad about the BES. I don't think you will find a third party solution since most corporate users use a BES to access applications behind the firewall. Communications between handhelds and the BES are encrypted. The BES can act as your proxy for intranet sites.

http://www.blackberry.com/products/software/server/exchange/security.shtml

[T-Roy]

I'm not clearly understanding the question. Do you want to use the VPN to sync with your BlackBerry? Then yes you can use L2TP/IPSec or PPTP.

??

[ia_praveen]

I have an exsting VPN that already exisits between an ADSL Central Router and multiple GPRS routers. The Entire VPN is structured using hardware from Sarian Systems.

What I am attempting to do now is get the blackberry within the same VPN so it can communicate with any device within the VPN.

The project im working on involves the usage of a PLC network that communicates via GPRS over the internet. The Blackberry will be configured as a Modbus Master. What we need to do now is to get the blackberry talking to each of the PLC's within the network and to keep things nice and secure and simple the blackberry needs to be within the same VPN.

Am I making any sense?

So really what im thinking (hoping) rather is that if the Blackberry can form an IPSec Tunnel with the central ADSL router then it will be part of the VPN and the ADSL router will route traffic accordingly to the right PLC.

EDIT : Im now looking at the Palm Treo as this has a third party IPSec tool that we can possibly use to achieve what we want to do....

[rta53]

ia_praveen,

You've probably lost most people here when you mentioned PLCs. :) I work with PLCs and it would be nice to be able to do what you are trying to do. We have an AB SLC 5/05 at my company that has an embedded web server. I am able to view the web pages in it over the internet, which of course allows me to view them on my BB.

[ia_praveen]

rta53, yeah I feared that I would have completely lost a few people with the PLCs bit. However, the days where PLCs and Computer Controls existed on differently levels is slowly drawing to an end.

The PLC's that we use (SIXNET) also have the capability to run embedded webservers, however since schneider took out the patent on "running a webserver on a PLC" there are jsut too many licesnsing issues up in the air.

Besides, no other protocol can compare in terms of performance with the Modbus protocol in terms of speed and most importantly data usage (we pay premeiums here in Australia for GPRS data)

What I was originally intending on doing was to get the ADSL to route all traffic coming on a specific port to a specific PLC. So for example if the BlackBerry (being a Modbus Master) polls the ADSL on 123.12.12.34:30000 all modbus traffic is redirected to PLC1 and 123.12.12.34:30001 gets traffic redirected to PLC2.

However this would mean that I have to modify the Modbus spec to accoomdate it sending data on another port (its default port is 502). So in terms of compliance this is an issue.

From the looks of things im going to have to ditch the BB due to its poor third party software support on the RIM O/S (nonone develops stuff for that). Palm on the other hand has such an abundance of third party utilities which is just so tempting :D

[jzerden]

Whats interesting is that I was listening to the on-line demo of the 7270 (wifi only) device yesterday. RIM mentioned that this device would have a VPN client (it seems to be IPSec from what I can tell.) I asked a question of whether they would plan on providing the VPN client for the non-wifi device. They said no – since “just use BES.” I then wrote in another question asking for the VPN client so that I could SSH to a clients server – and they never responded to that one.

So basically it sounds like RIM has a VPN client that would work – but they have no plans to release for the carrier phones – since they don’t see a need for it.

Maybe try and give them a call asking about the 7270 – and try to suggest this option!

Jon

[ia_praveen]

Thanks for the update Jon, I believe the information that you have provided certainly is going to help expedite matters with our decision on using the BB for our application.

Spending thousands of dollars on a "BES" isnt quite the option we are looking for as we tailor projects for customers who dont quite need the whizz bang capabilities of the BES. I Suppose the BES would work well for huge organisations with hundreds of BB's, but not for your typical small PLC network where operators only have a couple of these things.

We were quite happy when O/S ver.4 came out for the BB as we thought we could get rid of the BES altogether but now we are stuck with this wall in front of our faces with the VPN support.

Cheers for all the help and advice guys! All the best with your dev work on the BB's :)