Case Study

This chapter is different from the rest of the chapters in this book. From the beginning of this book, each chapter has focused on VPNs and various VPN implementation types, and how these are configured on Cisco VPN 3000 concentrators, software and hardware clients, IOS-based routers, and PIX and ASA security appliances. Throughout the book I've tried to include many configuration examples, illustrating common scenarios and possible problems you might face while implementing VPNs.

This chapter doesn't introduce any new material. Instead, this chapter will focus on the use of the concepts and features discussed in this book and implement many of them in a case study environment. In other words, I'll create a fictitious company with various Cisco VPN-capable products and bring together much of the VPN knowledge I've discussed so far and apply it to my fictitious company. Using a case study, you can see more easily where certain VPN solutions make more sense than other solutions.

Throughout this case study, I'll discuss why I'm using certain VPN implementations over others and, within a certain product, why I'm using one particular feature instead of another. The configurations I'll put together focus primarily on the implementation of VPNs. I'll discuss other non-VPN items that are important to the design, but in most cases the configuration of those items is beyond the scope of this book.