What's new
  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

pschmehl

Occasional Visitor
My first post in this forum - http://www.snbforums.com/threads/need-advice-on-vpn-routers.34672/ - discussed my need to find a vpn router. My needs are very simple. I am the only user. I need to connect remotely to view and manage one security cam. When I connect, no one will be using the computer that the VPN server is running on.

After much discussion and consideration, I decided to install SoftEther VPN - https://www.softether.org/ - and use L2TP over IPSec to create a VPN tunnel to my home network. Installing and configuring it was very simple. I won't detail it here, because they have excellent tutorials that do that - https://www.softether.org/4-docs/2-howto

It's open source and completely free (provided by a Japanese university) and available for Windows, Mac and Unix/Linux. It even includes a free dynamic dns service, which makes getting up and running very simple.

There was one catch that I either missed or was neglected in the docs. After I setup the virtual VPN host and the L2TP over IPSec tunnel, I could connect and authenticate but then the connection was dropped. It turns out you have to create a bridge between the virtual VPN adapter and the physical adapter of the machine that's running the server.

I can now connect to my VPN server from the internet using my Mac and my iPhone, which is very convenient.

A note for those who aren't too familiar with L2TP over IPSec. You have to open 3 UDP ports on your firewall (or forward them on your router); 500 udp, 1701 udp and 4500 udp.

For those of you who don't have high demand issues, or have a box that isn't being heavily used, this might be the solution to a low cost VPN alternative.
 
Very cool! I was wondering why softether sounded so familiar--I looked into it as an open source alternative to vpn routers. But as you've noticed, the cost of vpn routers isn't much anymore, so we just bought the hardware instead. :)
 
When you're retired, you think about every dollar you spend and wonder if you can get by without spending it.
 
When your parents racked up millions in debt and are too old to work it off so it falls on your shoulders, you think exactly the same way.

I built all our work infrastructure almost literally from others' trashed equipment--routers that only worked in certain ways, switches with bad ports, heavily underpowered or obsolete computers, open source software--you name it. It's actually quite amazing what can be done for next to free these days--you just gotta put in the time for the research.
 

Similar threads

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top