IPSec FAQ

VPN Overview

1. What is VPN?
2. Why do I need VPN?
3. What are most common VPN protocols?
4. What is PPTP?
5. What is L2TP?
6. What is IPSec?
7. What secure protocols dose IPSec support?
8. What are the differences between 'Transport mode' and 'Tunnel mode?
9. What is SA?
10. What is IKE?
11. What is Pre-Shared Key?
12. What are the differences between IKE and manual key VPN?
13. What is Phase 1 ID for?
14. What is FQDN?
15. When should I use FQDN?

P662 VPN

1. How do I configure P662 VPN?
2. What VPN protocols are supported by P662 VPN?
3. What types of encryption does P662 VPN support?
4. What types of authentication does P662 VPN support?
5. I am planning my P662-to-P662 VPN configuration. What do I need to know?
6. Does P662 support dynamic secure gateway IP?
7. What VPN gateway that has been tested with P662 successfully?
8. What VPN software that has been tested with P662 successfully?
9. Will ZyXEL support Secure Remote Management?
10. What are the difference between 'My IP Address' and 'Secure Gateway IP Address' in Menu 27.1.1?
11. Is the host behind NAT allowed to use IPSec?
12. Why does VPN throughput decrease when staying in SMT menu 24.1?
13. How do I configure P662 with NAT for internal servers?
14. I am planning my P662 behind a NAT router. What do I need to know?
15. How can I keep a tunnel alive?
16. Single, Range, Subnet, which types of IP address do P662 support in VPN/IPSec?
17. Can P662 support IPSec passthrough?
18. Can P662 behave as a NAT router supporting IPSec passthrough and an IPSec gateway simultaneously?

1. What is VPN?

A VPN gives users a secure link to access corporate network over the Internet or other public or private networks without the expense of lease lines. A secure VPN is a combination of tunneling, encryption, authentication, access control and auditing technologies/services used to transport traffic over the Internet or any insecure network that uses the TCP/IP protocol suite for communication.

2. Why do I need VPN?

There are some reasons to use a VPN. The most common reasons are because of security and cost.
Security
1). Authentication
With authentication, VPN receiver can verify the source of packets and guarantee the data integrity.
2). Encryption
With encryption, VPN guarantees the confidentiality of the original user data.
Cost
1). Cut long distance phone charges
Because users typically dial the their local ISP for VPN, thus, long distance phone charge is reduced than making a long direct connection to the remote office.
2).Reducing number of access lines
Many companies pay monthly charges for two types access lines: (1) high-speed links for their Internet access and (2) frame relay, ISDN Primary Rate Interface or T1 lines to carry data. A VPN may allow a company to carry the data traffic over its Internet access lines, thus reducing the need for some installed lines.

3. What are most common VPN protocols?

There are currently three major tunneling protocols for VPNs. They are Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) and Internet Protocol Security (IPSec).

4. What is PPTP?

PPTP is a tunneling protocol defined by the PPTP forum that allows PPP packets to be encapsulated within Internet Protocol (IP) packets and forwarded over any IP network, including the Internet itself. The PPTP is supported in Windows NT and Windows 98 already. For Windows 95, it needs to be upgraded by the Dial-Up Networking 1.2 upgrade.

5. What is L2TP?

Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) is an extension of the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) used by an Internet service provider (ISP) to enable the operation of a virtual private network (VPN) over the Internet.

6. What is IPSec?

IPSec is a set of IP extensions developed by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) to provide security services compatible with the existing IP standard (IPv.4) and also the upcoming one (IPv.6). In addition, IPSec can protect any protocol that runs on top of IP, for instance TCP, UDP, and ICMP. The IPSec provides cryptographic security services. These services allow for authentication, integrity, access control, and confidentiality. IPSec allows for the information exchanged between remote sites to be encrypted and verified. You can create encrypted tunnels (VPNs), or just do encryption between computers. Since you have so many options, IPSec is truly the most extensible and complete network security solution.
7. What secure protocols does IPSec support?

There are two protocols provided by IPSec, they are AH (Authentication Header, protocol number 51) and ESP (Encapsulated Security Payload, protocol number 50).

8. What are the differences between 'Transport mode' and 'Tunnel mode?

The IPSec protocols (AH and ESP) can be used to protect either an entire IP payload or only the upper-layer protocols of an IP payload. Transport mode is mainly for an IP host to protect the data generated locally, while tunnel mode is for security gateway to provide IPSec service for other machines lacking of IPSec capability.

In this case, Transport mode only protects the upper-layer protocols of IP payload (user data). Tunneling mode protects the entire IP payload including user data.

There is no restriction that the IPSec hosts and the security gateway must be separate machines. Both IPSec protocols, AH and ESP, can operate in either transport mode and tunnel mode.

9. What is SA?

A Security Association (SA) is a contract between two parties indicating what security parameters, such as keys and algorithms they will use.

10. What is IKE?

IKE is short for Internet Key Exchange. Key Management allows you to determine whether to use IKE (ISAKMP) or manual key configuration to set up a VPN.

There are two phases in every IKE negotiation- phase 1 (Authentication) and phase 2 (Key Exchange). Phase 1 establishes an IKE SA and phase 2 uses that SA to negotiate SAs for IPSec.

11. What is Pre-Shared Key?

A pre-shared key identifies a communicating party during a phase 1 IKE negotiation. It is called 'Pre-shared' because you have to share it with another party before you can communicate with them over a secure connection.

12. What are the differences between IKE and manual key VPN?

The only difference between IKE and manual key is how the encryption keys and SPIs are determined.

- For IKE VPN, the key and SPIs are negotiated from one VPN gateway to the other. Afterward, two VPN gateways use this negotiated keys and SPIs to send packets between two networks.
- For manual key VPN, the encryption key, authentication key (if needed), and SPIs are predetermined by the administrator when configuring the security association.

IKE is more secure than manual key, because IKE negotiation can generate new keys and SPIs randomly for the VPN connection.

13. What is Phase 1 ID for?

In IKE phase 1 negotiation, IP address of remote peer is treated as an indicator to decide which VPN rule must be used to serve the incoming request. However, in some application, remote VPN box or client software is using an IP address dynamically assigned from ISP, so P662 needs additional information to make the decision. Such additional information is what we call phase 1 ID. In the IKE payload, there are local and peer ID field to achieve this.

14. What is FQDN?

FQDN(Fully Qualified Domain Name), IKE standard takes it as one type of Phase 1 ID.
As we mentioned, Phase 1 ID is an identification for each VPN peer. The type of Phase 1 ID may be IP/FQDN(DNS)/Ueser FQDN(E-mail). The content of Phase 1 ID depends on the Phase 1 ID type. The following is an example for how to configure phase 1 ID.
ID type Content
------------------------------------
IP 202.132.154.1
DNS www.zyxel.com
E-mail support@zyxel.com.tw
Please note that, in P662, if "DNS" or "E-mail" type is choosen, you can still use a random string as the content, such as "this_is_P662". It's not neccessary to follow the format exactly.
By default, P662 takes IP as phase 1 ID type for itself and it's remote peer. But if it's remote peer is using DNS or E-mail, you have to ajust the settings to pass phase 1 ID checking.

15. When should I use FQDN?

If yoour VPN connection is P662 to P662, and both of them have static IP address, and there is no NAT router in between, you can ignore this option. Just leave Local/Peer ID type as IP, then skip this option.

If either side of VPN tunneling end point is using dynamic IP address, you may need to configure ID for the one with dynamic IP address. And in this case, "Aggressive mode" is recommended to be applied in phase 1 negotiation .

1. How do I configure P662 VPN?

You can configure P662 for VPN using SMT or Web configurator. P662 1 supports Web only.

2. What VPN protocols are supported by P662?
All P662 series support ESP (protocol number 50) and AH (protocol number 51).
3. What types of encryption does P662 VPN support?

P662 supports 56-bit DES and 168-bit 3DES.
4. What types of authentication does P662 VPN support?

VPN vendors support a number of different authentication methods. P662 VPN supports both SHA1 and MD5.

AH provides authentication, integrity, and replay protection (but not confidentiality). Its main difference with ESP is that AH also secures parts of the IP header of the packet (like the source/destination addresses), but ESP does not.
ESP can provide authentication, integrity, replay protection, and confidentiality of the data (it secures everything in the packet that follows the header). Replay protection requires authentication and integrity (these two go always together). Confidentiality
(encryption) can be used with or without authentication/integrity. Similarly, one could use authentication/integrity with or without confidentiality.
5. I am planning my P662-to-P662 VPN configuration. What do I need to know?

First of all, both P662 must have VPN capabilities.

If your P662 is capable of VPN, you can find the VPN options in Advanced>VPN tab.

For configuring a 'box-to-box VPN', there are some tips:

1. If there is a NAT router running in the front of P662, please make sure the NAT router supports to pass through IPSec.
2. In NAT case (either run on the frond end router, or in P662 VPN box), only IPSec ESP tunneling mode is supported since NAT againsts AH mode.
3. Source IP/Destination IP-- Please do not number the LANs (local and remote) using the same exact range of private IP addresses. This will make VPN destination addresses and the local LAN addresses are indistinguishable, and VPN will not work.
4. Secure Gateway IP Address -- This must be a public, routable IP address, private IP is not allowed. That means it can not be in the 10.x.x.x subnet, the 192.168.x.x subnet, nor in the range 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (these address ranges are reserved by internet standard for private LAN numberings behind NAT devices). It is usually a static IP so that we can pre-configure it in P662 for making VPN connections. If it is a dynamic IP given by ISP, you still can configure this IP address after the remote P662 is on-line and its WAN IP is available from ISP.

6. Does P662 support dynamic secure gateway IP?

If the remote VPN gateways uses dynamic IP, we enter 0.0.0.0 as the Secure Gateway IP Address in P662. In this case, the VPN connection can only be initiated from dynamic side to fixed side in order to update its dynamic IP to the fixed side. However, if both gateways use dynamic IP addresses, it is no way to establish VPN connection at all.

7. What VPN gateway that has been tested with P662 successfully?

We have tested P662 successfully with the following third party VPN gateways.

- Cisco 1720 Router, IOS 12.2(2)XH, IP/ADSL/FW/IDS PLUS IPSEC 3DES
- NetScreen 5, ScreenOS 2.6.0r6
- SonicWALL SOHO 2
- WatchGuard Firebox II
- P662
- Avaya VPN
- Netopia VPN
- III VPN

8. What VPN software that has been tested with P662 successfully?
We have tested P662 successfully with the following third party VPN software.

- SafeNet Soft-PK, 3DES edition
- Checkpoint Software
- SSH Sentinel, 1.4
- SecGo IPSec for Windows
- F-Secure IPSec for Windows
- KAME IPSec for UNIX
- Nortel IPSec for UNIX
- Intel VPN, v. 6.90
- FreeS/WAN for Linux
- SSH Remote ISAKMP Testing Page, (http://isakmp-test.ssh.fi/cgi-bin/nph-isakmp-test)
- Windows 2000, IPSec

9.Will ZyXEL support Secure Remote Management?
Yes, we will support it and we are working on it currently.

10. What are the difference between the 'My IP Address' and 'Secure Gateway IP Address' in Menu 27.1.1?
'My IP Adderss' is the Internet IP address of the local P662. The 'Secure Gateway IP Address' is the Internet IP address of the remote IPSec gateway.

11. Is the host behind NAT allowed to use IPSec?

NAT Condition | Supported IPSec Protocol
VPN Gateway embedded NAT | AH tunnel mode, ESP tunnel mode
VPN client/gateway behind NAT* | ESP tunnel mode
NAT in Transport mode | None

* The NAT router must support IPSec pass through. For example, for P662 SUA/NAT routers. The default port and the client IP have to be specified in menu 15-SUA Server Setup.

12. Why does VPN throughput decrease when staying in SMT menu 24.1?

If P662 stays in menu 24.1, 24.8 and 27.3 a certain of memory is allocated to generate the required statistics. So, we do not suggest to stay in menu 24.1, 27.3 and 24.8 when VPN is in use.

13. How do I configure P662 with NAT for internal servers?

Generally, without IPSec, to configure an internal server for outside access, we need to configure the server private IP and its service port in SUA/NAT Server Table.

However, if both NAT and IPSec is enabled in P662, the edit of the table is necessary only if the connection is a non-secure connections. For secure connections, none SUA server settings are required since private IP is reachable in the VPN case.

For example:

host----P662(NAT)----ADSL Modem----Internet----Secure host
\
\
Non-secure host

14. I am planning my P662 behind a NAT router. What do I need to know?

Some tips for this:

1. The NAT router must support to pass through IPSec protocol. Only ESP tunnel mode is possible to work in NAT case. In the NAT router is P662 NAT router supporting IPSec pass through, default port and the P662 WAN IP must be configured in SUA/NAT Server Table.
2. WAN IP of the NAT router is the tunneling endpoint for this case, not the WAN IP of P662.
3. If firewall is turned on in P662, you must forward IKE port in Internet interface.
4. If NAT are also enabled in P662, NAT server is required for non-secure connections, NAT server is not required for secure connections and the phyical private IP is used.

For example:
host----P662----NAT Router----Internet----Secure host
\
\
Non-secure host

15. How can I keep a tunnel alive?

To keep a tunnel alive, you can check "keep alive" option when configuring your VPN tunnel. With this option, whenever phase 2 SA lifetime is due, IKE negotiation procedure will be invoked automatically even without traffic to make the connection stay.
But to reduce the consumption of system resource, if VPN tunnels get disconnected either manually, by idle timer, or because of power cycle, packet triggering is still necessary to make the tunnel up.

16. Single, Range, Subnet, which types of IP address do P662 support in VPN/IPSec?

The mentioned P662 series support all of the types. In other words, you can specify a single PC, a range of PCs or even a network of PCs to utilize the VPN/IPSec service.

17. Can P662 support IPSec passthrough?

Yes, P662 can support IPSec passthrough. P662 series don't only support IPSec/VPN gateway, it can also be a NAT router supporting IPSec passthrough.

If the VPN connection is initiated from the security gateway behind P662, no configuration is necessary for NAT nor Firewall.

If the VPN connection is initiated from the security gateway outside of P662, NAT port forwarding and Firewall forwarding are necessary.

To configure NAT port forwarding, please go to WEB interface, Setup/ "SUA/NAT", put the secure gateway's IP address in default server.

To configure Firewall forwarding, please go to WEB interface, Setup/Firewall, select Packet Direction to WAN to LAN, and create a firewall rule the forwards IKE(UDP:500).

18. Can P662 behave as a NAT router supporting IPSec passthrough and an IPSec gateway simultaneously?

No, P662 can't support them simultaneously. You need to choose either one. If P662 is to support IPSec passthrough, you have to disable the VPN function on P662. To disable it, you can either deactivate each VPN rule or issue a CI command, "ipsec switch off" from SMT menu 24.8. You can get into SMT menu via either telnet or console connection.