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Free S/WAN
GNU/Linux FreeS/WAN is an implementation of IPSEC (Internet Protocal SECurity) and IKE for GNU/Linux systems. It uses strong cryptography to provide both authentication and encryption; authentication ensures that packets are from the right sender and have not been altered in transit, and encryption prevents unauthorised reading of packet contents.
These services allow you to build secure tunnels through untrusted networks. Everything passing through the untrusted net is encrypted by the IPSEC gateway machine and decrypted by the gateway at the other end. The result is Virtual Private Network or VPN. This network is effectively private even though it includes machines at several different sites connected by the insecure Internet.
Several companies are co-operating in the Secure Wide Area Network (S/WAN) project to ensure that products will interoperate. There is also a VPN Consortium fostering cooperation among companies in this varea. The primary objective is to help make IPSEC widespread by providing source code which is freely available, runs on a range of machines including ubiquitous cheap PCs, and is not subject to US or other nations' export restrictions.
Last updated 28 Dec, 2007
About
Leadership
- Eric Young - Contributor
- Steve Reid - Contributor
- Peter Onion - Contributor
- John S. Denker - Contributor
- Rob Hatfield - Contributor
- Marc Boucher. - Contributor
Related Projects
Versions
2.04
2.04 stable released on 2003-11-25
- Released: 25 Nov, 2003
- Code Maturity: Stable
- Source Archive: ftp://ftp.xs4all.nl:21/pub/crypto/freeswan/freeswan-2.04.tar.gz
- Licenses: GPLv2
- Interfaces: Command Line
User Community and Support
User manual available in HTML format from http://www.freeswan.org/freeswan_trees/freeswan-2.00/doc/index.html