What it is? - This is a free VPN Appliance for small offices and home offices. Is easy to set up and easy to use.
How does it work? - It does work as a virtual machine using the free Vmware player. Is using CentOS 5.3 (linux) and openvpn 2.09. The user interface is a web interface, so no special skills are requested in order to set up and use the virtual appliance.
What do you need to know about your network in order to use the Openvpn Appliance? - Many of today's small networks are behind a WI-FI router. There are few parameters that you need to collect from the router web interface.
Also in order to access your network from the internet the external IP from your ISP must be known (and you must have a public external IP). For some service providers this IP is not fixed and may change from time to time. One way around this problem is to use a dynamic DNS service configured in your router and the dynamic DNS name can be used in the VPN client configuration file.
The last piece of the puzzle is the software client used to access the VPN appliance. This is a free openvpn client that must be installed on the remote machine plus the configuration file that will be automatically generated by the Openvpn Appliance.
Few words about the openvpn server configuration – for this application the network bridge mode is used so the clients will be part of the local network. The are few advantages: windows broadcast will work in a transparent way and is not necessary to set up a new IP schema, configure routes, etc. So the user experience is the same as in the local network, all the file and printer shares will work as expected and if the internet connection is fast enough the user will not even notice the VPN connection.
Installation steps:
Collect from your router: IP address, First and Last DHCP address, DNS settings (many times the router is also a DNS cache server)
Download and install the Vmware Player from http://www.vmware.com – you must install and run the player on a machine that will stay on all the time in order to listen for VPN connection requests.
Download the Openvpn Appliance and run the appliance using the VMware player.
Log in to the Openvpn Appliance using the information from the Vmware player console – the first time the appliance is running it will use DHCP to get a IP address. The user name is admin and the default password is 12345678
In the Openvpn Appliance web interface go to IP configuration – choose a fixed IP for the Openvpn Appliance outside the DHCP range and fill in the rest of the parameters with the information specific for your network (Example – Router address is 192.168.1.1 = Appliance GATEWAY, DHCP range is 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.150, so we can choose (outside DHCP range) Appliance_IP=192.168.1.10 and the range for vpn IP's from 11 to 20 (these IP's will be assigned to the VPN users) – VPN_First_IP=192.168.1.11, VPN_Last_IP=192.168.1.20. Appliance_DNS1 and DNS2 can be the DNS servers from the local ISP, some public DNS servers like opendns.com 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 or the address of the local router if is running a DNS cache. Finally the network net mask is usually 255.255.255.0=Appliance_NETMASK). Save these settings and Reboot the openvpn appliance.
Log in to the web interface using the new fixed IP assigned is step 5 – change the admin password and use “Edit user list” to add some users.
Login to your router and set up a port forwarding for UDP port 1194 from the internet to the fixed IP that was assigned to the Openvpn Appliance in step5.
Follow Openvpn Appliance “Client Configuration” links to download the openvpn client and configuration. Unzip the config files as instructed and start the openvpn client. This will create a "openvpnappliance" option in the connect menu of the client.
Now you can connect from outside your network to the Openvpn Appliance. The VPN encrypted channel will go over: Openvpn Client > Internet > your public IP > Router, UDP port 1194 forwarded to Openvpn Appliance fixed IP> Openvpn Appliance > Openvpn Server in network bridge mode.
Enjoy, relax, work from the beach :)
I need to know the root password for the appliance. The root password is password but plese note that is a good idea to stay with the web interface unless you have advanced linux knowledge.
This appliance was made to be connected to a home network with DHCP. It has only
one network interface and that must be set in "bridge mode" in the vmware player. If there is no DHCP server in the network
or the network adapter is logically disconnected at boot the appliance will not be able get an IP at startup and will complain. Also
in this case is not possible to access the web interface (will display "In your Browser type https:// to access the web interface").
So what can be done? - if there is a DHCP server in the network please check in the vmware player that the network interface
is in bridge mode and is "connected/connected at startup" and reboot.
If there is no DHCP server in the network login at the prompt in the vmware player window using user root/pass password.
mcedit /etc/openvpn/settings (or use your favorite editor)
Look for the "Appliance_IP 0.0.0.0" line and change that to a staic IP in your net like 192.168.1.20. Also change the Appliance
NETMASK and GATEWAY lines according to your network. Hit F2 to save and F10 to exit.
This will fix the appliance config but not the startup config. In order to fix the startup config:
mcedit /etc/sysconfig/
And change that file to something like (adapt to your net):
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=192.168.1.20
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
Hit F2 to save and F10 to exit, reboot
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Download OpenVPN Appliance
VPN Appliance self extract archive (7zip self extract)
Questions? Need help?
Email your Question at: ovpn at voipintouch dot com.