Cisco VPN client for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

May 18, 2005 2:23 PM

I recently upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. However I do not have a compatible VPN client from Cisco. Anyone know of a place I can obtain one?

The version of the client I have currently installed is not compatible with OS X 10.4. Does anyone know of a way to obtain a copy of the 10.4-compatible Cisco VPN client? It appears to be available from the Cisco site, however I cannot access this. I would prefer not to have to re-install OS X 10.3.9

posted by cahlers to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)

Best answer: Try here
posted by nathan_teske at 2:41 PM on May 18, 2005

Best answer: Try here. for 4.6.03. I've always had good luck downloading Cisco VPN software from university sites; most protect the VPN download area, but some don't. Try this google search, failing the UCLA download: search for .edu vpnclient hosts.
posted by littlegreenlights at 2:44 PM on May 18, 2005

Dang.
posted by littlegreenlights at 2:44 PM on May 18, 2005

Response by poster: thanks, nathan! that worked. I really appreciate your and littlegreenlights' help.
posted by cahlers at 3:22 PM on May 18, 2005

I've been wondering why on earth Cisco makes it so difficult to obtain that damn VPN client. I've had to resort to university sites myself.
posted by neilkod at 3:29 PM on May 18, 2005

I've been wondering why on earth Cisco makes it so difficult to obtain that damn VPN client.

It's very easy to obtain. Your network administrator will have it, or have access to it through his Cisco support contract.
posted by kindall at 3:36 PM on May 18, 2005

what's the difference bet. the Cisco VPN and the built-in?
posted by amberglow at 3:46 PM on May 18, 2005

kindall, my employer refuses to acknowledge Macs and give blank stares when I ask for the Mac VPN client. They dont want to have to 'support' another OS. What's amazing is that the Mac VPN client is exactly the same as the windows one, it even accepted my .pcf file just fine.
posted by neilkod at 4:22 PM on May 18, 2005

I can speak to why it's so hard to get from Cisco: because it's an export-controlled product, by U.S. law. So when someone gets it from the Cisco website, they have to attest that they're not going to export it, and that attestation has to have valid user contact information associated with it, hence the need to have a support contract.

And all this means that, by the letter of the law, the links above providing the client to people who are unaffiliated with UCLA are just a setup to get the UCLA sysadmin in a boatload of trouble if some federal person decides to look for a test case for the export law; UCLA isn't doing anything to ensure that the client isn't downloaded by people who the U.S. State Department has decided shouldn't be allowed access to it.

(All this isn't to say that I agree with the export laws, but to explain why Cisco does what they need to do to adhere to them.)
posted by delfuego at 4:23 PM on May 18, 2005

Amberglow, the Cisco client supports certain features that the built-in one doesn't.

Note that you can configure most any Cisco VPN to accept a connection via PPTP in a manner that is compatible with Apple's OS X VPN client, but you lose some Cisco-specific things on the VPN side. Thus, out-of-the-box, most Cisco VPN servers only support the Cisco client, and if the admin wants to make the VPN accessible to non-Cisco clients, then he or she has to make the config changes to make that so.
posted by delfuego at 4:27 PM on May 18, 2005

Its mentioned almost parenthetically, but this 10.4 Cisco client will not work with multi-processor systems.
posted by vacapinta at 4:36 PM on May 18, 2005

Response by poster: kindall, my employer states they still need to "test" OS X 10.4. They also state the VPN client for 10.4 is not yet available. My employer is by no means small, and they *do* support macs.
posted by cahlers at 4:39 PM on May 18, 2005

oh--thanks. (My office had me upgrade to 10.3 at home last year so that i could use the built-in VPN--i guess they don't use Cisco servers)
posted by amberglow at 5:03 PM on May 18, 2005

Y'all aren't thinking like a typical Cisco customer. See, it doesn't matter much that you can't easily get Cisco's VPN client yourself, because you shouldn't be installing things on your computer yourself. When your IT guy comes to install 10.4, which will be in 3-6 months after it has demonstrated its stability (and after its cost has been justified to the bean counters and the support desk trained on it), he will also install a VPN client that works. In the meantime, you won't upgrade the OS yourself, because if you do, you won't be able to get the VPN to work, so he doesn't have to worry about you jumping the gun on your own. In other words, the situation is win-win for your company's IT staff.
posted by kindall at 10:40 PM on May 18, 2005

And I should add that if you're not a big enough company that this kind of process makes sense, you probably shouldn't buy enterprise hardware. In fact, back when I worked for a small company it was like pulling teeth to get a Cisco router because we only needed one and their sales reps weren't going to return our calls for that.
posted by kindall at 10:42 PM on May 18, 2005