nixCraft

Hi everyone,

How's everyone doing today? I hope everyone is doing okay and will have a great holiday of July 4.

I have a question and need help about setting up VPN server. What I heard is we can make linux machine as a VPN server? Am I correct? Mine is running on SuSe10, and I would like to make it as a VPN server so that I can securely remote to my home network from anywhere, like at work. Does anyone know how to do that? I don't want to open port 8080 for remote access on my router since it's not secure. I know somebody can break the passwork in just a few seconds. What I think is if I can make my linux box as a VPN server, I can securely remote to my home network without opening port 8080 on the router. If anyone have any idea about how to securely connect to home network from remote area, please help me. I heard that VPN is the best thing to do. Thank you.

Hi,

Top of the world yup holidays are here!

Yes VPN is the best security ... don't go for anything else. Now there are two things here. If you just want to access single computer from office, it is better to use OpenSSH ( also implements a level-2/3 "tun"-based VPN) to access and transfer files. OpenSSH also allows you to do port forwarding for email and other stuff.

Office -> Home Router with port forwarding to home computer -> Home computer running openssh

If you are looking to open private network with office or vise versa OpenVPN is the software you need. It is not a web-based VPN, and is not compatible with IPsec or any other VPN package such as Microsoft PPTN.
Office -> VPN client -> Home Router with VPN connection forwarding to home computer -> Home computer running OpenVPN sever -> LAN


See OpenVPN - An Open Source SSL VPN Solution by James Yonan web site.

If you need further help just hit reply button

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May the force with you!

Thanks a lot for your input. Very appreciate that.