Even though you use a Mac, your work is quite likely using a Windows-based system and has a Windows-based VPN setup. My work does. Sometimes I need to connect to the VPN to access documents. I have no trouble with Entourage because that connects over the Internet without the need for a VPN. I had to search around on the net to find a solution to connecting to a VPN from a Mac because I couldnt find the answer by myself.
Basically the steps are as follows:
- Open up System preferences and select Network.
- Click the + sign in the lower left to add a new connection.
- Select VPN as the interface.
- Select PPTP as the VPN type, give it a name and hit create.
- Now select your new VPN connection on the left hand side.
- Enter the server address and the username.
- Click authentication and type in your password and hit ok.
- Hit apply, then connect and you are connected.
To make it easier, I ticked the option that says Show VPN status in menu bar. Then, from the menu bar you can easily connect / disconnect from your VPN connections.
I have found that the VPN from the Mac works better that from a Windows machine. I constantly had trouble on the Windows machines trying to connect to my work VPN, but the Mac slides right without a hassle.
Thanks for that – very simply explained!
Cheers
Hi Robert,
I have a question that I hope you can help me with. I have done everything you explained above and it works wonderfully, except, even though I am connected to my client’s network, I am NOT able to go anywhere within their network or to remote desktop to any of their machines. I can see their shared folders, but they don’t show any contents when I click on them in Finder. Do you have any ideas about what might be going on and how I might fix the situation, please?
Thanks,
Kevin
Nice explanation, I’m surprised connecting to windows servers hasn’t been made more obvious on Macs. Still took a while to get the right file server address once connected…