Remote-access Guide

how to create a vpn with remote access linux

by Dr. Elbert Abshire Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago
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Set up a new VPN interface

  1. In System Settings, open the Network panel and click the + button to create a new interface.
  2. On Ubuntu, select VPN from the list of interface types and click Create.
  3. Select the Cisco AnyConnect Compatible VPN connection type (and, on Ubuntu, click Create ).
  4. Choose a name for the connection (e.g., Stanford) and set the Gateway to su-vpn.stanford.edu. Then, click Add (or Save ). ​

Full Answer

Is it possible to set up a VPN on Linux?

There are hundreds of VPN providers on the market, but it's also possible to set up a VPN server a Linux system, too! We show you how to set up a VPN server on Linux in a handy step-by-step guide below.

How do I set up a VPN on my Network?

To do this, you'll need to add your VPN configuration to the Network Manager. It's simple to do so – just open your Network Manager's settings and select Add New Connection. From here, input the configuration file downloaded from the server and select the option to import the connection.

Can I set up a server-client OpenVPN?

This completes your first ever server-client OpenVPN configuration. Go ahead and enjoy secure browsing using OpenVPN. In case you don’t want to bother setting up your own VPN server, you should use a reputable VPN client, such as NordVPN. Edward is a Content Editor with years of experience in IT as a writer, marketer, and Linux enthusiast.

Is there an open source VPN solution for Linux?

Many VPN solutions are costly, and/or challenging to set up and manage. Fortunately, for the open source/Linux community, there is a solution that is actually quite simple to set up, configure, and manage. OpenVPN is that solution and here you will learn how to set up the server end of that system.

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Can I create my own VPN in Linux?

If you want to enhance your privacy and avoid putting your data in the hands of a VPN service provider, then you can create your own VPN. The process of doing so won't require you to be a programmer, but it's a bit technical and it will take some effort.

How do I setup a VPN remote access?

Configure Remote Access as a VPN ServerOn the VPN server, in Server Manager, select the Notifications flag.In the Tasks menu, select Open the Getting Started Wizard. ... Select Deploy VPN only. ... Right-click the VPN server, then select Configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access.More items...•

Can VPN be installed remotely?

Using any web browser, you can access resources remotely without worrying about the underlying operating system. In order to setup an office VPN (IPsec or SSL VPN) to support working from home, you'll need to purchase, install and configure a hardware device known as VPN Gateway in your office location.

How do I run a VPN on Linux?

Connect to a VPNOpen the Activities overview and start typing Network.Click on Network to open the panel.At the bottom of the list on the left, click the + button to add a new connection.Choose VPN in the interface list.Choose which kind of VPN connection you have.More items...

What is the difference between VPN and Remote Access?

A VPN is a smaller private network that runs on top of a larger public network, while Remote Desktop is a type of software that allows users to remotely control a computer. 2. Remote Desktop allows access and control to a specific computer, while VPN only allows access to shared network resources.

What is RDP VPN?

RDP vs VPN for Remote Access While RDP and VPN serve similar functions for remote access, VPNs allow users to access secure networks whereas RDP grants remote access to a specific computer. While useful to provide access to employees and third parties, this access is open-ended and unsecure.

What is a gateway VPN?

A VPN gateway is a type of networking device that connects two or more devices or networks together in a VPN infrastructure. It is designed to bridge the connection or communication between two or more remote sites, networks or devices and/or to connect multiple VPNs together.

How can I access a server from outside the network?

How does it work?Open Remote Desktop Connection on your computer.Type in your organisation's public IP address and click connect.Enter your organisation's username and password.

Which VPN is best for remote desktop?

Best Remote Access VPNs for business.Perimeter 81 – Best all-round business VPN.GoodAccess – Security Strategy Options.ExpressVPN – Lightning Fast VPN.Windscribe – VPN with Enterprise-Friendly Features.VyprVPN – Secure VPN with Business Packages.NordVPN – Security-first VPN.More items...•

Which free VPN is best for Linux?

The Best Free VPNs for Linux (Tested August 2022)ExpressVPN — #1 VPN for Linux With Easy Setup and Fast Speeds. ... CyberGhost — Optimized Servers for Easy Linux Streaming and Torrenting. ... ProtonVPN — Dedicated GUI App for Linux With Unlimited Data. ... hide.me — Easy CLI Setup With 10GB Monthly Data Allowance.More items...•

What is VPN server Linux?

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. One such open source VPN software is OpenVPN and it can work as a Linux VPN server. At a basic level, a VPN secures connections by creating a point to point secured connection.

How do I turn my VPS into a VPN?

Installing OpenVPN Access Server on the VPSOpen your SSH client and connect to your VPS server using the IP address supplied by your VPS provider. ... Login as root and enter the password you were given by your VPS provider. ... Before proceeding you should check that tap/tun is enabled. ... Setup a password.More items...

How can I access a private network remotely?

The best solution that will allow organizations to access files remotely is to set-up a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN provides a cable-like connection via the Internet between a remote PC and your office's server.

How do I setup a VPN connection to my corporate network?

In Windows, go to Control Panel, Network and Sharing, Create a New Connection, VPN. For a Mac, you'll go to System Preferences, Network, +, VPN. At this point, you'll be prompted to enter your office's IP address. If your ISP has given you a static IP address, go ahead and enter it and test the connection.

Why is a VPN setup necessary for remote home workers?

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) provides your business with a securely encrypted connection to your network over the public Internet. It adds an important piece of layered security, which is essential to protect your data.

What is VPN in Linux?

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. One such open source VPN software is OpenVPN and it can work as a Linux VPN server. At a basic level, a VPN secures connections by creating a point to point secured connection. Using a good VPN for Linux is one of the best ways to remain secure over the Internet or an open network.

How to download OpenVPN?

Open the OpenVPN client UI and download the appropriate profile for your OS. Alternatively, you can use wget or curl command and provide the URL to download the software.

How to test if OpenVPN works?

How to Test a Linux VPN Server running OpenVPN. To test if OpenVPN works as expected, connect the VPN client and check your IP address. You can use the DNS leak test website from the browser. It should show you the OpenVPN server’s IPv4 address. Next, you can choose Extended test.

Where is OpenVPN log?

In case you are connected to the VPN and are not able to browse the Internet, you can check the OpenVPN logs at /var/log/openvpnas.log in your VPS. In case you find entries similar to the one shown below, you’re most likely experiencing compression issues:

How many users can I have on OpenVPN?

The free OpenVPN client supports two users. To create more users, you would need to select any of the paid plans. You can add additional users from the admin UI. Navigate to the User Management tab, and click the User Permissions link.

How does VPN work?

By using a VPN, you can keep your data secure and encrypted by not allowing even the ISP to read it. Anonymity – a VPN lets users maintain anonymity while browsing over the Internet. The IPs are not traceable. IP Change – VPN allows users to change their IPs and browse safely.

What are the benefits of VPN?

VPN comes with certain benefits. Few of these are highlighted below: 1 Security – VPN provides better and stronger protection since all data is encrypted. This provides additional security as compared to Firewalls. 2 Remote Access – to ensure high security, many organizations, government and defense offices allow remote access only through their VPN 3 ISP encryption – ISP stands for Internet service provider. If you use a public Wi-Fi connection, the ISP can read all your unencrypted data. By using a VPN, you can keep your data secure and encrypted by not allowing even the ISP to read it. 4 Anonymity – a VPN lets users maintain anonymity while browsing over the Internet. The IPs are not traceable. 5 IP Change – VPN allows users to change their IPs and browse safely. This in certain cases is used in regions that have location-based restrictions 6 Unblock websites – certain websites are blocked in a few geographical regions. A VPN maintains anonymity and hence is commonly used to bypass Internet censorship to unblock websites 7 Throttling – certain ISPs throttle user bandwidth based on the content. Such throttling can be avoided by using a VPN

How to get started with OpenVPN?

To get started, you need to install OpenVPN and Easy-RSA on your server. Then install OpenVPN on your client machine.

What does successful creation of a VPN show?

The successful creation of a VPN will show the client’s output reading “Initialization Sequence Completed” at the end of its output. You will also find a new type of connection in your available network interfaces.

What is the ping address of OpenVPN?

This screenshot shows the “tun0” interface. That’s what the OpenVPN server made. You can see its address as 10.8.0.1 and ping that address from the client to verify a successful connection.

What is VPN for online?

By Casey Houser / May 3, 2018. Virtual private networks (VPNs) allow you to hide your online data transmissions and enhance your security while browsing the Internet from public places. Many online service providers offer both free and paid VPN options for you to use. However, even the best paid plans can be unreliable or slow at times.

What is DH in OpenVPN?

OpenVPN makes use of the Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange method of securely exchanging cryptographic keys across a network. You will create a DH parameters file with the following command:

How many files are in /etc/openvpn/client?

For any client, you should now have four files in “/etc/openvpn/client:” Client1.crt, ClientName.key, ca.crt, and ta.key.

Can you change the server name in OpenVPN?

You can change “ServerName” in the command above to whatever name you wish. Make sure you reflect that change when you copy your new key to the OpenVPN server directory:

How to install OpenVPN package?

Run sudo apt-get install openvpn to install the OpenVPN package.

How to restart OpenVPN?

Finally, restart OpenVPN with the command sudo /etc/init.d/openvpn restart. The VPN server is now ready to accept connections from clients (the topic of my next tutorial.)

Why is VPN important?

The VPN is very often critical to working within a company. With working from home being such a popular draw to many industries, it is still necessary to be able to access company folders and hardware that exists within the LAN. When outside of that LAN, one of the best ways to gain that access is with the help of a VPN.

Do certificates need to be created for VPN?

Now, certificates will have to be created for each host needing to connecting to the VPN. Once the certificates have been created, they will need to be copied to the respective clients. The files that must be copied are:

Does OpenVPN require certificates?

The OpenVPN server will rely on certificate authority for security. Those certificates must first be created and then placed in the proper directories. To do this, follow these steps:

Introduction

Remote access has never been more important, with internet connectivity expanding daily and customer expectation for such technology increasing, not being able to deploy, modify and diagnose your software remotely puts you in the dark ages of technology.

The Problem

We had tried simple existing technologies to allow remote access such as PPTP & OpenVPN setup on the site routers. Although these connections would be unstable due to bad implementations of the VPN protocols by router manufacturer's, they would for the most part work.

Solution

Our solution was to create a single virtual LAN, when connected to this LAN a client would be able to see and communicate with all connected devices. This means when one of our programmers connects to the VPN they can see every remote PLC without changing connection. Below is an sample of sites IP addresses and forwarded ports into the virtual LAN.

Set-up

For this to work client-to-client needs to be enabled in the OpenVPN's server configuration. Without this option users wouldn't be able to communicate with each other. Enabling client-config-dir is also essential as it allows us to map all sites to static internal OpenVPN IP addresses.

Deployment

Site configuration is simple, each EdgeRouter deployed to site will be assigned a static OpenVPN IP address such as 10.8.0.100. Each device is set to DHCP on eth0, this means all the unit needs to connect to our OpenVPN server is a working internet connection with DHCP enabled.

Maintenance

Using the LTS version of Ubuntu on our server with some automated scripts to get security updates means minimal manual intervention. Adding new clients is partly automated with scripts also.

Security

OpenVPN is a tried and tested protocol, it's Open Source and heavily audited by the professional and independent security community's. It has the strongest reputation out of all modern VPN protocols.

The Four Types of VPN

First, a disclaimer. A VPN can have many, many topologies. Here, we break it down into four rough “categories”, but keep in mind as we move through the tutorials that in reality, a VPN could take on many arbitrary designs. These are just some helpful and common ways to break it down.

Getting Started: Deploy Netmaker

A Netmaker server will manage our various networks. Netmaker is a platform for deploying and automating WireGuard-based networks. We’re going to be running the quick install. The instructions can also be found in the README on GitHub.

Personal (Private Browsing) VPN

As we discussed earlier, a personal VPN allows you to browse the web with some anonymity. Typically, you pay a company to host the VPN for you. Here, we have just deployed our own VPN server, so we will use that instead.

Remote Access VPN

Remember what we said about “Remote Access” VPN’s? Typically they are used to access a work environment. However, you probably don’t have access to configure your corporation’s network access controls. For this tutorial, let’s just assume you want to access your home network. It actually works quite similarly.

One More Thing

We could have easily created the “home gateway” node on our “VPN” network, and have both in one! Secure access to our home network, and secure access to the internet. That’d be pretty great, right? If interested, I’m going to challenge you to set that up on your own.

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