Discussion on:

Use Hamachi VPN on your Linux clients

What about the 5.x.x.x ip address range that Hamachi reserves but is not allocated to anyone? Is there any possibility / probability with the ip address shortage that the range may be allocated to a different party? What would be the dangers of using the product in such a situation?

It is possible that the 5.x may be handed out in the future.

Of course I would assume that this would simply cause authentication to fail, not route your VPN through Uzbekestan or anything...

Would this work for connecting to a CheckPoint firewall that uses a client certificate as an authentication mechanism?

Just a heads up for folks here. Using a VPN to gain access to an internal machine from the outside might run afoul of the internal network's owner's policies. If that network owner is responsible for your pay, you might think twice before just poking holes and joining networks together with VPNs, no matter who makes the software. At worst, it could be considered an illegal access. Ask first.

Like a lot of vpn apps this is a client only. They assume you already have a vpn set up somewhere to access.

I have found no open source and free vpn servers for windows, the only free server I can find is openvpn. It is a bear to set up but once going, it's very secure and performs well.

I suppose setting up a client is ripe for simplification. I'll have to give this one a try and see if it really is 'easy.' The benchmark I would use is the vpn client tool in the Mandriva control center. A few clicks, fill in some paths in provided windows and you're off...

This article is very interesting for me.
But I'm using PacktiX as vpn software. We can use this on both server and client. This is very useful for me. And this is released as OSS , the name is "UT-VPN".
Thanks.

OpenVPN is totally free and does provide a server, although there's no server for WINDOWS. ~(8 \)

I want to try to use OpenVPN next time because it's for free,
thanks to you I could know it, thank you so much.

By the way, I think UT-VPN is totally free as well as OpenVPN.
I could download it for free at this site.
But I did not use free edition. If you want ,check this site.
This site says this software of English version will be released soon.
http://utvpn.tsukuba.ac.jp/files/utvpn/v1.01-7101-public-2010.06.27/Binary%20%28Win32%29/Japanese/
Thanks!

I will keep my eye on that project and test it when they release an English localization. OpenVPN can be temperamental in some environments, if someone were to build an easier, more comprehensive build I'd consider using it.

If you are going to try OpenVPN I suggest testing on debian. It's been the easiest to work with so far, and the most stable as well.

Be well out there... =)

The English version of UT-VPN is now under development, so you will get it soon.

When I confirmed the license of OpenVPN to read the following address,
I saw it is free for testing purpose.
Can I use this for free on business?

url:https://www.openvpn.net/index.php/access-server/pricing.html

Thanks!!

That is a specific, more feature-enhanced product they provide, "Access Server" is a trade name. I would imagine this makes the whole thing a LOT easier, more secure and integrates easily with Exchange, mail or what have you.

If you're up to it, you can do this with the basic free OpenVPN under the GPL, but any 'advanced' features you'd need would be your responsibility to create them.

With the paid version you are guaranteed a modicum of support from the developers. With the free version you will probably get support in the community forums but it would be someone volunteering to help you, and there's no guarantee that they are providing the right answers!

I find most open source communities to be extremely helpful. But there is the potential that you may have a huge problem and nobody volunteers any answers. You have to weigh how much responsibility you want to have yourself, versus passing the buck to someone else, for a fee.

I may be lucky but most of my clients are very understanding of the nature of open source. I'm up front with it's pitfalls as well as advantages. Fortunately most open source apps are so well written I don't have a lot of troubles with it.

But let me tell you, there's been a few days when I wished like heck this problem were somebody else's responsibility. That'll happen with any software, but so long as your windows licenses are up to date, you WILL ultimately get help from Microsoft if absolutely needed.

I never run anything else on a firewall machine other than the firewall, I use dedicated hardware on the perimeter. VPN at this point is a matter of forwarding the port to the VPN server.

If I need added security there's options like allowing connections only from known remote IPs, which you'd do on the VPN server with iptables.

So long as you don't let the server key out of the bag, OpenVPN is pretty dang secure.

This article leaves out half (or more) of the Linux boxes out there. It only addresses the Debian/Ubuntu distributions. It should also have the commands and information for the rpm based distros, like Fedora, Suse and RHEL & clones.

"ubuntu" is "Linux" so far as the general public is concerned.