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IPSEC is Internet Protocol SECurity. It uses strong cryptography to provide both authentication and encryption services. Authentication ensures that packets are from the right sender and have not been altered in transit. Encryption prevents unauthorised reading of packet contents.

This version of Openswan supports Opportunistic Encryption (OE) out of the box. OE enables you to set up IPsec tunnels to a site without co-ordinating with the site administrator, and without hand configuring each tunnel. If enough sites support OE, a "FAX effect" occurs, and many of us can communicate without eavesdroppers.

In addition to OE, you may manually configure secure tunnels through untrusted networks. Everything passing through the untrusted net is encrypted by the IPSEC gateway machine and decrypted by the gateway at the other end. The result is Virtual Private Network or VPN. This is a network which is effectively private even though it includes machines at several different sites connected by the insecure Internet.

Please note that you will need a recent kernel (>=2.4.24 or 2.6.x) for using this package. The standard Debian kernel includes both IPSEC and crypto support, patching the kernel is no longer necessary!

If you want to use the KLIPS IPSec code for kernel modules instead of the native ones, you will need to install either openswan-modules-source or linux-patch-openswan and build the respective modules for your kernel.