Cisco’s proprietary VPN client is only available to cisco customers with a valid Smartnet contract perhaps a slightly anachronistic approach but I have found the support contracts to be reasonable and you should really have one of your security appliance is business critical.

Save the file to your PC and then open it by double clicking on it. If the file is a a Microsoft installer (.msi) it will run and install from here, but it may be within a .zip archive, if it is you will need to extract it first by opening the archive and dragging the file or folder from the archive to your desktop and then double click on the extracted file to start the installation. The setup files may be within a folder in which case go into the folder (after first extracting it from the archive) and double click vpnclient_setup.exe to start the installation.

Just click through each dialogue box using the default options. The install may take several minutes to complete and you do need to reboot the PC before the software will work.

When your computer restarts go to the start menu “All Programs -> Cisco VPN Client -> VPN Client” to start the application.

You will need to set up a connection entry before you can connect to the VPN gateway. This is most easily done by importing a connection profile (.pcf) file which should be available from the system administrator.

To import the file copy if to your computer and then choose the import option from the Connection Entries menu in the VPN client, browse to the pcf file and click open. You should see the new connection entry in the VPN client window.

Highlight the connection entry and select connect from the menu bar, enter your windows user name and password when prompted, if the connection attempt is successful the VPN client window will disappear and a small padlock will be displayed in the lower right corner of the screen, closed for connected and open for disconnected.

You are now connected to the remote network and you should be able to access services in the usual manner.