Book Image

Troubleshooting OpenVPN

By : Eric F Crist
Book Image

Troubleshooting OpenVPN

By: Eric F Crist

Overview of this book

OpenVPN, the most widely used open source VPN package, allows you to create a secure network across systems, keeping your private data secure. Connectivity and other issues are a pain to deal with, especially if they are impacting your business. This book will help you resolve the issues faced by OpenVPN users and teach the techniques on how to troubleshoot it like a true expert. This book is a one stop solution for troubleshooting any issue related to OpenVPN. We will start by introducing you to troubleshooting techniques such as Packet Sniffing, Log Parsing, and OpenSSL. You will see how to overcome operating system specific errors. Later on, you will get to know about network and routing errors by exploring the concepts of IPv4 and IPv6 networking issues. You will discover how to overcome these issues to improve the performance of your OpenVPN deployment. By the end of the book, you will know the best practices, tips, and tricks to ensure the smooth running of your OpenVPN.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Supported operating systems


Arguably, the easiest thing to resolve is identifying an operating system that has proper support for OpenVPN. If the tun or tap device is not supported, it quickly rules out OpenVPN or limits the specific features of OpenVPN, but is often overlooked. Both iOS (all versions as of this writing) and Android (also, all versions as of this writing) do not support the tap device.

There are other operating systems that don't support virtualized network devices at all. FreeBSD jails, for example, don't support the tun or tap devices without some significant configuration and startup tricks. Many embedded operating systems, generally on routers and switches, do not fully support OpenVPN. Even if your platform of choice claims to support the virtual network devices, it's best to do some digging to ensure that OpenVPN runs reliably.

Embedded devices

There is a long list of embedded devices that support OpenVPN. Snom VOIP phones have the ability to support OpenVPN for secure...