On my iMac at home, I use the Cisco VPN Client to remotely connect to my office’s server. But when I upgraded to Snow Leopard, my Cisco VPN Client stopped working. In fact, it won’t even launch anymore! I went to Cisco’s website to see if there was a new version to download, but they haven’t updated their VPN Client since February 2009. Are they planning on ever supporting Snow Leopard?

The quick answer is that you can simply reinstall the Cisco VPN Client after you install Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and it’ll still work for now--even though it’s not officially supported by Cisco to run under Snow Leopard and future OS updates might break it.

Cisco IPsec VPN connections are built into Snow Leopard.

The long answer is that Cisco has ceased development on that product because Cisco IPsec VPN connections are now a built-in native component of Snow Leopard. All future updates to the Cisco VPN Client for Mac will be provided directly through Mac OS X’s Software Update mechanism.

To make a connection to your Cisco VPN client in Snow Leopard, go into System Preferences > Network and click the plus sign in the lower left to add a new service. Choose VPN as the Interface and Cisco IPSec as the VPN Type.

This is the configuration screen for your Cisco VPN server.

Next, click the new service you just added in the list on the left, then type in the server settings and authentication settings that were given to you by your office’s IT department. There’s even a checkbox to add a handy menubar icon to control your VPN connections.

For even more advanced control over multiple VPN connections (Cisco or not), download Shimo, an excellent third-party VPN client ($19, chungwasoft.com).