Can Android 1.6 VPN client work with Cisco IPSec?

[mandabbyx]

So, last fall I went against the grain of the rest of my company and got an HTC G1 phone (T-Mobile), rather than an iphone like almost everyone else (except the few BB holdouts). Back when I purchased, my phone was still running 1.5, and 1.6 was a few weeks out. The guys at the store told me that the new OS update would have VPN support, and I had read the press release regarding just that, so I went ahead and got the phone figuring that I could hold out a few weeks until the 1.6 update happened.

So, on and off over the past few months, I have played around trying to make my settings work with our VPN at work. One of my co-workers sets his iphone down beside me, so I can copy his settings. This proves to be difficult, because the field names don't match up (for instance, I don't have "Group Name" as one of my fields to enter).

I took about a half-hour to do a tech support live chat with T-Mobile to see if they could be any help. That was very disappointing, because the tech was away for 10-15 minutes and came back with, essentially, "I don't really have any documentation on that." OK...thanks??

So, I guess my question is, has anyone successfully configured the VPN client using IPSec? If so, If I showed you the iphone set-up settings, could you tell me where to enter that info? I hate to have to dumb it down that far (there are only like 4 fields to enter, less username and password).

I am reluctant to getting into rooting the phone and installing alternate roms for warranty reasons. Maybe rooting without reflashing will work? Anyway, it is getting to the point where I will have to (reluctantly) give up this phone (and pay the penalty) and take an iphone so I can make necessary VPN connections to work. If anyone can help, or point me to some good documentation, that would be great. I have searched and seen conflicting posts as to whether the Android VPN client will work with Cisco IPSec at all.

Sorry for the long post.

 

[narendra]

Until Google get around to dealing with this enhancement request, you can't connect to the old style plain IPSec VPN connections (like Cisco's) without rooting and installing some software like this (never tried that software) or one of the Cisco VPN apps on the Market.

 

[Midnight-Rain]

Thank you very much for the quick reply. I will keep an eye on that thread.

Maybe I'll get gutsy and root the phone so I can use one of those apps.

 

[XV SHOOTER XV]

Rooting isn't hard if you can follow instructions. The trick is finding the right instructions for your phone model and the firmware that you want to run.

Most people here confuse "rooting" (which is the act of gaining super user access to the OS) with installing a custom firmware (which requires root access to do). So, you don't have to install custom firmwares or radio images or anything like that - you can just get root access then use one of the apps on the Market.

If I recall correctly, the reason for needing root access is that you need to make a new virtual network adaptor (i.e. the Cisco Network Adaptor you might see in Windows if you use the Cisco VPN client), and you need root access to do this.