System information
145Chapter 9 Customizing Services
Managing VPN Service
Use the VPN pane to turn VPN remote access service on or o, inspect or change the
VPN secret, set the IP address range for VPN users, or save a VPN conguration le for
Mac OS X users.
About VPN Service
VPN (virtual private network) service lets users connect to your network from home
or other remote locations over the Internet. Users make a secure VPN connection to
access services such as le sharing, address book, mail, iChat, iCal, and web.
To ensure condentiality, authentication, and communications integrity, VPN service
uses the L2TP protocol with a shared secret.
A secure shared secret is generated automatically when you set up your server.
The shared secret isn’t used to authenticate client computer users for a VPN
connection. Instead, it allows the server to trust client computers that have the
shared secret, and it allows client computers to trust the server that has the secret.