I know nothing about *nix, just usage of google to learn what I can. What I'm trying to do is fairly simple and I think I am just missing something obvious. I have a machine running Ubuntu 14.04 that is connected to my VPN service provider with an openvpn connection. All traffic is routed through the VPN with this setup.

What I want to do is run Steam on this machine in its own namespace to connect directly to the internet without using the VPN connection. This is because in home streaming from my other machines obviously won't work if Steam connects over the VPN connection.

I am trying to do this with a network namespace. I've found plenty of examples of using the namespace to run the VPN within and using the namespace to just use certain programs with the VPN, but I want to have everything use the VPN and a namespace that does not use the VPN just for Steam.

I can create the network namespace and link it to the main network space easily. What I haven't figured out is how to provide external access to the internet for the namespace, I believe this is simple, and I'm also not certain how I'd connect the namespace to the internet avoiding the VPN operating in the main network space.

So far I've done this



To get internet access to the namespace I've tried examples I've seen using a bridge, which I failed miserably at resulting in no network access on the machine at all, and others that suggest using iptables to route internet traffic to the namespace. I understand it revolves around providing access to the veth0 virtual adapter in the main network space so it can provide it to the linked veth1 in the steam namespace, I just can't get it right. I'm also not certain if/how I can do this avoiding the active VPN in the main network space.


Here is what the network looks like without any of the steam network namespace modifications.



route -n results



ifconfig results


Thanks in advance!

An alternative would be to add routes to the Steam IPs through your eth0 gateway.