This document will introduce OpenVPN as a free, secure and easy to use and configure SSLbased VPN solution. The document will present some simple (and verified) scenario’s that might be useful for preparing security/networking labs with students, for creating a remote access solution or as a new project for the interested home user.
Introduction to OpenVPN
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
So is anyone using this in a corporate environment? our company needs a new VPN solution.. this might be nice!
why even post this…..or why even view the site if you don’t like the content.
you make an ass out of yourself with these comments.
After trying 2 methods to secure my wifi network at home (mpd and ipsec/racoon), I settled with OpenVPN. Its not that easy to set up, but its also not that hard. And, from my experience, once its up and configured, I experienced no disconnection, reconnection problems, or service restarts. Its the one for me.
This is thorough, but there’s no reason to jumpt through all those hoops and do all those tests to “prove” that your VPN is working. The introduction is correct when it says that OpenVPN is easy to set up and works on all platforms. Then it goes on to make the process seem as complicated as possible. The only “extraneous” part of this paper that’s useful is the brief description of port forwarding on the dedicated router.
The fact that the VPN server was located on a Linux PC configured as a router complicated the issue. As long as your gateway router forwards all incoming requests on the VPN port to the local host running the VPN server, there is no reason to have the VPN server sitting on a PC router…especially with dedicated routers being so much easier and reliable than PC routing.
RedHat/Fedora specific, but still gives a good idea…
http://fedoranews.org/contributors/florin_andrei/openvpn/
how matured is this software?
It compress your data and a connection feels like it was nearly twice as fast than it is, an 128k connection is like a 200k-up connection!
We use OpenVPN in our company for some external administration or some external users.
Our small company is using this in a road-warrior scenario with great success. Easier to set up than any Free/SWAN or other solution, especially with the introduction from Florin Andrei posted by another user above!
You can find some ready-to-apply examples in the manpage too! It’s a very good manpage.