VPN 24/7?

September 18, 2009 6:23 PM

VPN 24/7 on iPhone?

I use an iPhone, and I finally got hooked up to my work email -- but I need to use VPN to access it. Is there any reason (battery life, etc.) that I shouldn't just leave VPN turned on all the time? If it's not a good idea, are there any better solutions?

posted by sevenyearlurk to computers & internet (3 comments total)

It's preferable if you can use the VPN On Demand functionality in 3.0, just so you don't have to go in and manually turn it on. See page 36 in the Enterprise Deployment Guide.

As for why you might not want to be on the VPN all the time - VPN concentrator licensing? Not wanting personal network traffic going through your work network? I can imagine there may be additional battery drain but I don't think anyone has tested it.
posted by Remy at 8:48 PM on September 18

You know, now that you've said it, it seems obvious (the network traffic bit anyway, I don't know what the concentrator thing means exactly). Sadly the kind of VPN we have doesn't seem to support the vpn on demand feature. I wish there was a quicker toggle for it.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 2:27 AM on September 19

To explain the concentrator thing (to the best of my knowledge, which isn't great) - Cisco's VPN systems are sold as "concentrators", which are appliances that support up to a certain number of users. I was just trying to point out that if everyone was connected to the VPN all the time for checking email, you might run out of connections.
posted by Remy at 6:46 AM on September 19