Book Image

OpenVPN: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks

Book Image

OpenVPN: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks

Overview of this book

OpenVPN is a powerful, open source SSL VPN application. It can secure site-to-site connections, WiFi and enterprise-scale remote connections. While being a full-featured VPN solution, OpenVPN is easy to use and does not suffer from the complexity that characterizes other IPSec VPN implementations. It uses the secure and stable TLS/SSL mechanisms for authentication and encryption. This book is an easy introduction to this popular VPN application. After introducing the basics of security and VPN, the book moves on to cover using OpenVPN, from installing it on various platforms, through configuring basic tunnels, to more advanced features, such as using the application with firewalls, routers, proxy servers, and OpenVPN scripting. While providing only necessary theoretical background, the book takes a practical approach, presenting plenty of examples.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
OpenVPN
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Monitoring Tools


There are many tools that provide detailed statistics on network interfaces. Two very easily installed monitoring tools with great functions are ntop and Munin.

ntop

ntop monitors a network and may in some states be illegal because it creates detailed records of connections between IP addresses. Furthermore, it offers a nice browser GUI and does not need a running web server. ntop installs easily on Debian.

Enter apt-get install ntop and choose the interface you want to monitor. After software installation, type ntop -A, and enter an administrator password for ntop's admin account. Now type /etc/init.d/ntop start and point a browser to the http://IP:3000 of this system (ntop is running on port 3000). You will get a feature-rich window with a growing amount of information, especially if ntop has been for running some time:

ntop offers many possibilities. We can save the data to a database, access to a database can be secured and monitored, interfaces can be switched online...