I work from home and have been doing so for about 12 years now. I have used a number of different methods of connecting to work to get my work done. They range from a Wyse terminal and moden, tip(1) and a modem on a workstation, slow dialup, "fast" dialup with PPP, ISDN,DSL, Cable Internet, Sun.Net, CiscoVPN and the ultimate solution "punchin". Punchin is a Sun created VPN solution using IPSec and IKE to setup and tear down an IPSec protected tunnel into the SWAN (Sun internal network)
I rebooted my system earlier this afternoon and had to reconnect to the Sun Wide Area Network (SWAN). Normally, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. I would have simply run punchin, authenticated, brought up my ipsec protected tunnel, and continued on my merry way. This time around, punchin reminded my that my certificate is about to expire (in about 3 months). Apparently I have been using punchin for just under 4 years now. At this point, it's getting hard to remember life without it. Punchin is easy to use and it just works (tm). Even living on the bleading edge. As my fourth anniversary of punchin use approaches, I just want to thank the Solaris IPSec team for creating such a great piece of technology and a means for us to use it.
