Book Image

Mastering OpenVPN

By : Eric F Crist
Book Image

Mastering OpenVPN

By: Eric F Crist

Overview of this book

Security on the internet is increasingly vital to both businesses and individuals. Encrypting network traffic using Virtual Private Networks is one method to enhance security. The internet, corporate, and “free internet” networks grow more hostile every day. OpenVPN, the most widely used open source VPN package, allows you to create a secure network across these systems, keeping your private data secure. The main advantage of using OpenVPN is its portability, which allows it to be embedded into several systems. This book is an advanced guide that will help you build secure Virtual Private Networks using OpenVPN. You will begin your journey with an exploration of OpenVPN, while discussing its modes of operation, its clients, its secret keys, and their format types. You will explore PKI: its setting up and working, PAM authentication, and MTU troubleshooting. Next, client-server mode is discussed, the most commonly used deployment model, and you will learn about the two modes of operation using "tun" and "tap" devices. The book then progresses to more advanced concepts, such as deployment scenarios in tun devices which will include integration with back-end authentication, and securing your OpenVPN server using iptables, scripting, plugins, and using OpenVPN on mobile devices and networks. Finally, you will discover the strengths and weaknesses of the current OpenVPN implementation, understand the future directions of OpenVPN, and delve into the troubleshooting techniques for OpenVPN. By the end of the book, you will be able to build secure private networks across the internet and hostile networks with confidence.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Mastering OpenVPN
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Bridged tap adapter on both ends


Another advanced use case of a dedicated point-to-point VPN is to bridge two remote network segments together. OpenVPN allows you to bridge two network segments with the same IP address range together to form a single transparent network segment. It is generally not advisable to do this, as the performance of such a bridged network will not be optimal. In some cases, it is unavoidable. Normally, it would be better to assign different subnets to both ends, but sometimes special software is tied to a specific IP address and there is no alternative but to have the same subnet on both ends.

Consider the following network layout:

At the client-side, the network 192.168.4.0/24 is in use—with the OpenVPN client found at 192.168.4.128. At the server side, the same subnet is in use—with the OpenVPN server found at 192.168.4.65. The goal is to bridge the two networks together, so that all machines on both ends can see each other transparently.

In dev tap mode OpenVPN...