After a day of google searches and troubleshooting I couldn’t find a proper solution that was easy and explained properly for my type of standard setup. Here is how I configured an ipsec VPN tunnel between the SSG and ASA.

Cisco ASA 5505

• IP: 1.1.1.1
• Network: 192.168.1.0/24

Juniper SSG 320M

• IP: 2.2.2.2
• Network: 192.168.2.0/24

192.168.1.0/24 < -> 1.1.1.1 < --VPN Tunnel--> 2.2.2.2 < -> 192.168.2.0/24

Here is the actual configuration including all the access list to allow all traffic through, you will probably want to lock this down as it will allow all traffic through.

Cisco ASA 5505 Configuration

object-group network local_cisco_network
network-object 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0
object-group network remote_juniper_network
network-object 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0

access-list ciscovpn_nat_junipervpn extended permit ip object-group local_cisco_network object-group remote_juniper_network
access-list ciscovpn_nat_junipervpn extended permit ip object-group remote_juniper_network object-group local_cisco_network

access-list ciscotojuniper_cryptomap extended permit ip 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0

crypto map outside_map 1 match address ciscotojuniper_cryptomap
crypto map outside_map 1 set pfs
crypto map outside_map 1 set peer 2.2.2.2
crypto map outside_map 1 set transform-set ESP-3DES-SHA

tunnel-group 2.2.2.2 type ipsec-l2l
tunnel-group 2.2.2.2 ipsec-attributes
pre-shared-key

Juniper SSG 320M Configuration

set address “Trust” “192.168.2.0/24″ 10.248.1.0 255.255.255.0
set address “Untrust” “192.168.1.0/24″ 10.0.10.0 255.255.255.0

set ike gateway “1.1.1.1″ address 1.1.1.1 Main outgoing-interface “ethernet0/1″ preshare “” proposal “pre-g2-3des-sha”

set vpn “1.1.1.1″ gateway “1.1.1.1″ no-replay tunnel idletime 0 proposal “g2-esp-3des-sha”
set policy id 2 name “1.1.1.1″ from “Trust” to “Untrust” “192.168.2.0/24″ “192.168.1.0/24″ “ANY” tunnel vpn “1.1.1.1″ id 0xa pair-policy 1
set policy id 2
exit
set policy id 1 name “1.1.1.1″ from “Untrust” to “Trust” “192.168.1.0/24″ “192.168.2.0/24″ “ANY” tunnel vpn “1.1.1.1″ id 0xa pair-policy 2
set policy id 1
exit

This configuration will allow traffic from 192.168.1.0/24 to 192.168.2.0/24 and vice versa. On the Juniper side the name of the vpn and gateway I think are important otherwise the Phase 1 negotiation will not work. If I’ve missed something or if you don’t understand something please let me know.

I will probably need to configure this against a Cisco router in the near future so stay tuned for an update for the cisco side.

As part of my daily job I come into contact with many new and interesting products and things that help me do my job better.

Firstly, how often do you find that you need to constantly debug several machines at one? Tailing syslogs on each box can become a nightmare when you have more than one machine to look at. Consider these options…

1. Configure your systems with syslog-ng to forward to a centralized syslog server where you can “tail -f” your problems easily.
2. Buy expensive products such as SolarWinds syslog and snmp trap collector.
3. Use a free (500mb/day) syslog collector and search utility called Splunk

After messing with the SolarWinds products for a while I decided to move against it towards open source and free/cheaper options.

At Airbiquity I configured all of our servers and network equipment to send their syslog requests to a centralized syslog server. This was great for work debugging but I had trouble letting my boss have an easy utility that they could search with.

This is when I setup Splunk, it’s easy to install and while it can be load intensive it was a lot more intuitive and easy to use than the SolarWinds offering. So far it’s been great and we’re going to start looking into AD integration and clustering to support our multiple data centers.

So far I’ve applied to a few but due to the holiday season only a couple have gotten back to me in a timely manner. I hope to get some word back come the new year, otherwise I’ll be posting from a much more homeless place.

I’m working on a way to automate most of the process and basically get those 3 hours of my time back to put towards other things.

So far I’ve made a base SVN trunk for our Joomla installs. The trunk has a default basic template and a set of our “supported” modules. We currently have a similar setup for our Chambergate product and I’m going to be maintaining our joomla base install. Hopefully the way I’m doing it will make it easier to roll out mass updates for people and also allow us to document a set of static features.

You can check out my default install here

The project is called “I Heart Chinese“, it’s a really neat idea. Teaching Chinese with online flash animations, it’s online learning but in a fun and easy way. So far I’ve been working on the base system, the base system is built around my own database abstraction layer working with ADODB. It’s also using the smarty template engine, no particular reason other than it helps keep the code managable.

I’ll be updating as I write more, but so far it’s hard to show any recognizable progress.

If you want to track my progress (anybody actually read this?) check out http://netriver.nr-dev.com.