Tunnel Through Almost Any Firewall
OpenVPN Solutions' OpenVPN
OpenVPN Solutions' OpenVPN is a terrific open-source Secure Sockets Layer VPN
solution that works anywhere. I've never found a situation where the software
couldn't immediately tunnel straight back to the server. I've tested OpenVPN
scenarios in which the server was behind a Network Address Translation firewall
and the remote user was behind a random firewall, and the product still worked
without a hitch. Once I had to give a presentation to a customer, but at the
last minute the customer asked me to present different details. I plugged into
the customer's network, tunneled back to my server through the firewall, and
quickly picked up another presentation containing the information the customer
wanted to see.
Setup is straightforward; within an hour, I had a remote-access solution up
and running. OpenVPN is full of options and can be overwhelming to a new user.
However, all those options just illustrate the breadth of the software. In one
package, OpenVPN provides almost a superset of the features in just about every
other VPN software product on the market. For example, OpenVPN supports dynamic
IP addresses and can read certificates and private keys from smart cards that
support Microsoft's CryptoAPI. It can use virtual network drivers to create
secure Ethernet bridges, uses real-time adaptive-link compression and traffic
shaping to manage link bandwidth utilization, and has all kinds of clever pass-through
capabilities. You can use it to push the network out to the remote machine,
or to pull the remote machine into the network. I highly recommend OpenVPN—and
best of all, it's free.
| Reader: Ed Wildgoose
Director
Product: OpenVPN
Company: OpenVPN Solutions
Contact: openvpn.net |
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