SSL vs. IPSec VPN

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A very interesting article comparing the merits of SSL vs. IPSec Virtual Private Networks (spotted on Boing Boing).

In the corporate environment, VPNs are becoming common in the software arsenal, allowing mobile employees to connect to the intranet securely from anywhere through the Internet public network. One can use this technology to continue providing support, in a secure way, to the highly insecure FTP protocol -- even with the burden of a VPN client, it is far easier than replacing FTP altogether in favor of SSH/SFTP/SCP access because the mainstream webmasters' tools such as Dreamweaver do not support secure protocols out of the box yet.

Note to Mac OS X users: there are several solutions to connect to corporate VPNs. CISCO provides a Mac OS X client (which is even compatible with AirPort NAT, I use it with my old station). VPNTracker is a swiss-knife tool that allows access to many other vendors VPN servers, like Checkpoint (which itself do not provide any Mac client). The next version of Mac OS X dubbed Panther will include an IPSec VPN client, but I haven't yet installed my beta copy, so I don't know which server solutions it can connect to.