OpenVPN Cookbook - Second Edition
Copyright 2017 Packt Publishing
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First published: February 2011
Second edition: February 2017
Production reference: 1100217
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Birmingham
B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78646-312-8
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Credits
Author Jan Just Keijser | Copy Editor Pranjali Chury |
Reviewer Ralf Hildebrandt | Project Coordinator Izzat Contractor |
Commissioning Editor Pratik Shah | Proofreader Safis Editing |
Acquisition Editor Rahul Nair | Indexer Tejal Soni |
Content Development Editor Zeeyan Pinheiro | Production Coordinator Melwyn D'sa |
Technical Editor Vivek Pala |
About the Author
Jan Just Keijser is an open source professional from Utrecht, the Netherlands. He has a wide range of experience in IT, ranging from providing user support, system administration, and systems programming to network programming. He has worked for various IT companies since 1989. He was an active USENET contributor in the early 1990s and has been working mainly on Unix/Linux platforms since 1995.
Currently, he is employed as a senior scientific programmer in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, at Nikhef, the institute for subatomic physics from the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM). He works on multi-core and many-core computing systems and grid computing as well as smartcard applications. His open source interests include all types of virtual private networking, including IPSec, PPTP, and, of course, OpenVPN. In 2004, he discovered OpenVPN and has been using it ever since.
His first book was OpenVPN 2 Cookbook by Packt Publishing in 2011, followed by Mastering OpenVPN , also by Packt Publishing, in 2015.
About the Reviewer
Ralf Hildebrandt is an active and well-known figure in the Postfix community. Hes currently employed at Charite, Europes largest university hospital. OpenVPN has successfully been used at Charite for over 10 years now on a multitude of client operating systems.
Together with Patrick Koetter, he has written the Book of Postfix .
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Preface
OpenVPN is one of the world's most popular packages for setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN). OpenVPN provides an extensible VPN framework that has been designed to ease site-specific customization, such as providing the capability to distribute a customized installation package to clients or supporting alternative authentication methods via OpenVPN's plugin module interface. It is widely used by many individuals and companies, and some service providers even offer OpenVPN access as a service to users in remote, unsecured environments.
This book provides you with many different recipes for setting up, monitoring, and troubleshooting an OpenVPN network. The author's experience in troubleshooting OpenVPN and networking configurations enables him to share his insights and solutions to help you get the most out of your OpenVPN setup.
What this book covers
, Point-to-Point Networks , gives an introduction to configuring OpenVPN. The recipes are based on a point-to-point-style network, meaning that only a single client can connect at a time.
, Client-Server IP-Only Networks , introduces the reader to the most commonly-used deployment model for OpenVPN: a single server with multiple remote clients capable of routing IP traffic. This chapter provides the foundation for many of the recipes found in the other chapters.
, Client-Server Ethernet-Style Networks , covers another popular deployment model for OpenVPN: a single server with multiple clients, capable of routing Ethernet traffic. This includes non-IP traffic as well as bridging. You will also learn about the use of an external DHCP server and the use of the OpenVPN status file.
, PKI, Certificates, and OpenSSL , introduces you to the public key infrastructure (PKI) and X.509 certificates, which are used in OpenVPN. You will learn how to generate, manage, manipulate, and view certificates, and you will also learn about the interactions between OpenVPN and the OpenSSL libraries that it depends upon.
, Scripting and Plugins , covers the powerful scripting and plugin capabilities that OpenVPN offers. You will learn to use client-side scripting, which can be used to tail the connection process to the site-specific needs. You will also learn about server-side scripting and the use of OpenVPN plugins.