Any resonably priced pcmcia vpn cards ? 1

[technome]

My search for any resonably priced pcmcia network cards with VPN capabilities has come up naught. Closest I have come, is a small USB device from Linksys. Any pcmcia cards out there ?

 

[John Lewis]

VPN capabilities are generally not built into a network card of any kind.

Either software runs on the computer using whatever network card is there to make the connection, or the VPN is established at the router that the computer is connected to.

 

[technome]

Generally...
There are a few pci network adapters with VPN built in, 3com makes one. I found one proprietory VPN pcmcia adapter on my searches at a astronomically high price. I was wondering if I missed a more economical card.

 

[John Lewis]

Out of curiosity, which 3com are you looking at? Haven't seen a VPN card from them.

3Com does make a line of cards that have hardware crypto accelleration built in, but that does not equate to a VPN. It does reduce the overhead of an ipsec vpn connection by offloading the encryption to a processor on the card, but it still uses software on the host to handle the connection. Unless you have a really wide connection or a really slow processor, you shouldn't notice too much difference.

 

[technome]

Stand corrected....
You are correct about the 3com cards.

Closest item for use with laptops I have found is the Linksys usb port usbvpn1. Quess it will be a couple of years (or more) before the chip technology for VPN gets to pcmcia size.

Thanks for the response