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

Using a home router as a VPN server


Using OpenVPN on a small wireless router is possible, but it greatly depends on the exact type of the wireless router used. On the DD-WRT and OpenWRT websites, many supported wireless routers are listed, but even most of those have drawbacks. A minimum flash size of 8 MB is required and a sufficiently large NVRAM space is also desirable.

However, even with the right hardware, the performance of OpenVPN on a wireless router will not be very good due to the limited computing power of such devices. For people who want to set up a VPN to their home address, performance is usually fine, unless your home connection is capable of doing more than 100 Mbps upstream.

The following procedure can be used to configure a DD-WRT router as an OpenVPN server:

  1. In the DD-WRT web interface, click on the Services tab and click on VPN.

  2. Disable the OpenVPN client first by scrolling down and selecting Disable in the OpenVPN Client section.

  3. In the OpenVPN Server/Daemon section, enable...