We are trying out smart phones/pocketPCs for using as emergency remote access (ssh) to our Linux web servers. We are trying out a BlackJack and our network is Cisco. Unfortunately, I don’t see that Cisco has a VPN client for Windows Mobile (or any mobile, for that matter.) We previously tried the new 8525 from Cingular and got it working with a third party (Anthavpn) client, but had a really bad experience with the phone itself (kept crashing). I tried the Antha client, but it appears that it’s not compatible. I found another that installs and claims to work with Cisco - Bluefire - but I’m not doing something right. When I try to connect, it says “Please verify that an internet connection is established and then re-establish the tunnel.” This suggests that the phone isn’t connected to a data service, but the IE browser works fine when I fire that up. Any idea what I could be doing wrong? Anyone else had experience with the BlackJack or this general situation that could suggest some solutions or tricks? Or failing that, suggest a good handheld for doing light server wrangling?
If anyone’s interested, I contacted Bluefire, who said they were working on a new version of the VPN client. They allowed me to test the pre-release and it works on the BlackJack. This version will be out at the end of February.
We found a terminal client as well - zaTelnet. The trial download is here.
As an aside, the phone is great, but the battery is extraordinarily short lived. It seems to completely drain after less than a day and a half - and that’s even with very minimal actual call use. Samsung addressed this by including a second battery and charging unit, but it’s kind of defeating the purpose of slimness if you have to haul along an extra battery and charger.