Simple VPN questions

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James Rawson

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May 31, 2013
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10,510
Hi

I have somehow managed to successfully connect me and my friends networks together using DDNS on both ends and an ipsec VPN tunnel for a couple of years now.

My friend now wants to use a gsm router (which does have ipsec, PPTP and Layer 2 tunnel support) problem is the gsm company is messing with the DDNS bits and bobs which means the router wants to use an IP address on the connection which is not the ip address that the DNS servers are finding.

As i'm sure you guys will know IPSEC requires the DDNS or static ip details of both ends in order to connect. Or at least I think it does. So I was thinking, is there a way using IPSEC in such a way that the server is not interested in the client IP, or to use a different protocol such as PPTP or Layer 2 in order to circumnavigate this problem?

Thanks in advance

J
 
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meowkung

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Jul 15, 2012
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Have you tried OpenVPN? It is fairly easy to use and I think it is more robust than IPSec. IPsec works well with static IP addresses, but I had a lot of connection problems with IPSec with DDNS. Once I switched to OpenVPN, all problems with dropped connections were gone.
 
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J

James Rawson

Honorable
May 31, 2013
2
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10,510
Hi - Thank you so much for your repsonse

Is open VPN software rather than hardware based - if so I guess my routers would only require VPN pass through. Also are there any drawbacks to software rather than hardware based VPN's
 
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meowkung

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Jul 15, 2012
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Yes it is a software solution. It supports most major platforms. You can always comply your own if your platform is not supposed. If your router is supported by dd-WRT firmware, it can be pushed into the router. Obviously, a software solution will consume some resources from the host computers. In my experience, the resources consumed are negligible for modern CPUs. There is a bit of learning curve. The setup is not as simple as IPsec. Once you understand the principle, it is not too bad. It can be very flexible comparing with specialized hardware. Most setup are done through command line and configure files. I have some issues when the computer goes to sleep/hibernate with older version of openVPN. I keep all computers sleepless. I have no issue with client computer goes to sleep/hibernate and reconnect after awaking up with the latest openVPN. I haven't tested with the server yet.
 
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