Greetings!

What I am wanting to do is connect to my home network from a remote location over the internet. I have a FreeNAS box set up that shares 'home folders' to all the users on my network. I want to be able to use the windows vpn client built into windows to connect into my network and have it function just like I was plugged into the LAN. I have looked at several options like OpenVPN but they all seem complicated and seem to do a lot more than I really need. I feel like Linux is for sure the way to go to do this. I have a box I can dedicate to being a server for the vpn. Does anyone have any suggestions for me?

Thanks in advance.

Chris

Check out vpnc... it's a very simple config file, and what I use to do remote SysAdmin work from home if a server craps out through the night.

EDIT: Oops, I misread what you were asking for. I do believe that any VPN server that you try to setup is going to be mildly complicated. There will need to be shared keys and the such for the secure connection to function properly. I've not set one up before since we use a Cisco VPN concentrator at work, though. Sorry.

Hi Linville79. Thanks for the reply. I checked out vpnc but can't find any good documentation. Its it just a package you install inside something like RedHat?

I personally like vtun. Its a quick easy setup (well on debian at least). It provides basic vpn (tunnel, encryption, compression) and uses the tun/tap interface in the kernel so its endpoints are virtual ethernet interfaces that you can treat as real ones, so you can do things like bonding and bridging with them.

It currently doesn't have a windows client (and I didn't read the whole request) so just ignore this entry

You mentioned that you had a server you could use for hosting the VPN... I'm not sure if it's already running applications/services, or if you're able to assign only the VPN functions to it.

If the machine is able to be re-used, I very much recommend a small firewall distro, such as IPCop, which is linux-based (http://ipcop.sourceforge.net) or pfSense, which is FreeBSD-based (http://www.pfsense.org). Both have rather easy-to-configure graphical interfaces to configure a VPN endpoint (standalone) or site-to-site tunnel.

The OpenVPN GUI (client) is much easier to use in Windoze than the command-line-only one. It's available at http://www.openvpn.se . I've been using it for years along with a pfSense box and it's been rock solid--even with novice computer users.

There are active community-supported forums for both IPCop and pfSense, along with lots of documentation for each. I imagine it would be much easier to set up a VPN tunnel using one of these firewall distro's rather than attempting to configure it by hand on an existing linux server.

If you're needing something that installs on a currently-running box I'm not sure what to recommend on that... but it might be worth digging up an old P2/P3 box to dedicate to one of these firewall distro's, to make life a little easier...

Hope this helps.

Hello strick1226:

I am setting up an openvpn server. However, I am really stuck with making the openvpn server to be the gateway between the two LANs I want to connect through the tunnel. Is it possible for you to help me in making the openvpn server the gateway?

Let me know, and I will provide you with the routing tables and other information.

Thanks.
--Willie