need 2 simulate a virtual private network for my final year project any got any ideas please help my soul

It would be helpful if you delve more into the research question(s) your project seeks to answer or explore with regards to vpn. I'm presuming it won't just stop with setting up both ends of a vpn connection and reporting on this. Depending on the resources avaiable to you, here is what i think you might need:

1. Two separate internet connections from separate ISPs or probable just a singe one from an ISP and you can use a cyber cafe connection for the other one. If you need more control over your lab environment, i'll suggest getting two connections from different ISPs. One connection would be used to connect the private network to the unsecured public network (internet) while the other conneciton would be used to initiate a remote client connection over the public network. Internet connections from multilinks, starcomms, glo should do.

2. To an extent, you might need to subcribe to special services with the ISP you'll use for the server end as you'll need a level of cooperation from them if they are blocking VPN protocols such as PPTP, L2TP and IPSec. Otherwise you might be restricted to just using SSL in your lab.

3. A subscription to free dns services such as dyndns, noIP etc that would allow you to reach your dynamically assigned ip address remotely. Unless of course you are able to negotatiate a static public IP address from your ISP.

4. A local area network. In the minimum, you would need a switch (12 ports or more), a directory server (MS Windows Server or Linux RedHat or Solaris - depending on your resources) for users accounts a RADIUS server for remote authentication and a VPN server (or a vpn appliance - depending on what you are examining in your project) to provide the VPN connection. The server functionalities might be combined on one physical server or if you have high hardware spec, you can virtualise these servers with vmware or ms virtual server (however you can go with the physical servers if this adds unwanted complexity).

5. A laptop or desktop computer to initiate the remote client connection through the 2nd ISP connection.


The general setup would be to connect your VPN server to the 1st ISP connection and configure the appropriate VPN protocols that the server would allow a remote connection on. Like i said earlier, this largely depends on what protocols are being allowed through by your ISP but most ISPs should not usually block SSL going over port 443.  Ensure that you can reach this server either directly on the public assigned IP if this is static or use the free dns services to map a publicly accessible hostname to your dynamic IP (there might be some compexity with getting this to work). A simple telnet test to the specific port on the VPN server should confirm if the server is reachable on this port.

Configure the appropriate VPN and RADIUS settings and policies and initiate a remote connection from the laptop or desktop on the 2nd ISP connection. In this scenario, you are tunnelling through the public internet (over the Ist ISP connection through to the 2nd ISP connection) to your private network. Set up some files shares in advance so you are able to view these once connected through the VPN server.


Please NOTE: This is only a rudimentary run-through of a lab setup scenario, obviously it is not a detailed step-by-step procedure that is guaranteed to work as there are many intricate steps involved which i cannot possibly cover exhaustively here in a single post. Besides, being a final year computing student, i trust you have enough resources and capabilities to be able to build on this to suit whatever you seek to explore or examine on your project.

Regards

wt i need to know is if it there is like a software to simulate the whole vpn thing since it is not implementation but development of a model
the project topic is[b] DEVELOPMENT OF A VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK MODEL[/b] so i need to simulate to show how the process works at my defence tanx

well, thats a great deal of work to find on simulation sir!