With the gas prices rising I was told that I could work from home one day a week. I work as a Desktop Publisher and Graphic Design but at work we use windows computers and at home I have an MAC but I need to be able to access our network drives through a VPN. I have all the software I need on my MAC but I can't get the VPN to access our network through my MAC. Any advice, help, links, would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks

Apple has a built in VPN client to connect to other networks.  
Depending on the security of your company, you can take the IP address/Hostname, User name and password and punch that into the apple VPN client and see what happens.

What kind of VPN are we talking about? Cisco? Nortel? PPTP?

Mac has a VPN connection setting in the networking settings.  

If that won't work because you have a Cisco or Sonicwall firewall at work, those companies make clients you should be able to get.  Ask your IT about it.

I would think talking to your IT department would bring quicker results than asking on a gun forum.

Yes but we need more detail.

PPTP is the easiest/free. Others may or may not be free.

Check out VPN Tracker it's got a 30-day demo and is pretty easy to use.

-JTP

99% sure its Nortel, the IT department won't provide support for MACs.

Quoted: What kind of VPN are we talking about? Cisco? Nortel? PPTP?

Quoted: 99% sure its Nortel, the IT department won't provide support for MACs. Quoted: What kind of VPN are we talking about? Cisco? Nortel? PPTP?

Your IT people are lazy then.

Nortel has a client for the mac. The Notes are Here. Looks like it was last updated in '03 so I'd be tickled if it still actually worked.

-JTP

Yea I think they must be or else they don't have the knowledge or patience to work with MACS since our company uses only PCs. I am going to try and see if I CAN CONNECT TO THE vpn THIS WEEKEND I WILL LET YOU KNOW IF IT works.

Thanks

Quoted: Quoted: 99% sure its Nortel, the IT department won't provide support for MACs. Quoted: What kind of VPN are we talking about? Cisco? Nortel? PPTP? Your IT people are lazy then. Nortel has a client for the mac. The Notes are Here. Looks like it was last updated in '03 so I'd be tickled if it still actually worked. -JTP

If it's Nortel, then you'll need your company to provide you with the Mac VPN client, as I'm reasonably certain it's not free. If you're really in a pinch, sometimes colleges (not knowing that they're not supposed to do this) will provide a link for students and staff to download the VPN client, on a publicly accessible server. I've scored clients that way. Google, baby.

As an aside, this is the kind of thing that people don't often think about when they say "Fuck Microsoft, I'm getting a Mac!!!1one!1!". Ditto for running Linux. Or BSD. Or...

It's not a knock on OSX (or Linux, or...), it's a realization that most of the rest of the world focuses development and support resources on PC's. I've got a laptop full of software that I need to use everyday that only works in Windows. I run Ubuntu when I'm not working. My servers at home are FreeBSD. The web/DNS servers I'm responsible for at work run CentOS.

It's just the way it is. Fortunately, I'm not a mouth breathing moron, so I don't have much difficulty in maintaining a trouble-free Windows box.

since it's a mac, you should just be able to miracle it onto the VPN.