OpenVPN offers great possibilities; especially the networking concept allows very transparent setups with firewalls or in road warrior configurations. James Yonan, the founder has made very good decisions when trusting the TUN/TAP network drivers and the SSL/TLS libraries. OpenVPN was first published in 2001; version 2 came out in 2005 and offers much more advanced features than the versions before. Multi-client support, the Windows version, and the push/pull options are only some of its features. OpenVPN is easy to configure and has only a few weaknesses, the most serious of which is its incompatibility to IPsec by design. But to name this a weakness is a tough verdict, if it is compared to IPsec as done in this chapter. IPsec still is the standard, but OpenVPN has much more features at a much better security level.
OpenVPN: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks
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
Free Chapter
VPN—Virtual Private Network
OpenVPN
Installing OpenVPN
Configuring an OpenVPN Server—The First Tunnel
Setting Up OpenVPN with X509 Certificates
The Command openvpn and its Configuration File
Securing OpenVPN Tunnels and Servers
Advanced Certificate Management
Advanced OpenVPN Configuration
Troubleshooting and Monitoring
Index
Customer Reviews