OpenSSH with True VPN

June 14, 2007 at 5:54 pm | In Linux, Python |

I've been using port forwarding with OpenSSH for a long long time. I have a very large .ssh/config file where I setup all my remote services. What I did not know until today though was that OpenSSH supports a true VPN mode that makes multiple port forwards unecessary.

What that means is that I can access my server exactly as I would locally no matter where I am. No fuss… Easy. Sure. there's things like OpenVPN.. but ssh is (pre)installed on just about every computer I use.

I've updated my OpenSSH tutorial with all the details, as well as an easy to use python script for setting it all up. See the heading called "True VPN".


6 Comments »

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  1. Hi Ryan,

    Your wiki doesn't appear to be working at the moment.

    I'm interested in reading your tutorial on doing VPN with OpenSSH, as alternative to say using OpenVPN and having to open up more ports in my NAT-firewall.

    Comment by Bikramjit Sarkar — July 1, 2007 #

  2. Thanks for dropping by, I just moved servers and haven't gotten the wiki working yet. Sorry about that. I'll try to get it up a little later today, if I still have problems with it I'll at least post the plain text of it.

    Thanks again.

    Comment by ryan — July 1, 2007 #

  3. The wiki is back online.

    If you can't resolve wiki.enigmacurry.com (I just changed the DNS and it may not have propogated yet) just use enigmacurry.com:8000 in it's place.

    Comment by ryan — July 1, 2007 #

  4. Can this be ported to Windows?

    Comment by Anonymous — December 5, 2007 #

  5. Anonymous, I have no idea. But I would think that it would be difficult, as this solution involves integration with a linux kernel driver.

    That and windows doesn't have an ssh server installed by default either. That's really the whole idea behind this hack.. it's simple to set up because linux pretty much always has an SSH server.

    For more permanent solutions, OpenVPN is pretty much a better solution all around (even on Windows). It just requires a bit more setup.

    Comment by ryan — December 5, 2007 #

  6. Thanks for information.

    Comment by Zannet — March 15, 2008 #

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