OpenVPN client on XP as router??

andrew.m.higgs

Hi All,

Quick question. I would like to use an XP client connection to connect to other machines on the same network as the XP machine. Is this possible?

Basically I would want to connect to port 1234 on the XP vpn IP (10.8.0.117) and have that redirected / forwarded to 192.168.100.160 port 3456. Can this be set in openvpn or do I need to mess with XP's firewall and routing? Any links to great tutorials on this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

janjust

you would need to do some very extensive "messing" with the XP firewall and routing; actually, the routing part is easy , it's the forwarding/nat'ting that is required which I think will be very hard. OpenVPN cannot help you there.

What openvpn *can* do you for you is open up the subnet behind the XP VPN client : that way you would make a connection to 192.168.100.160 port 3456 , which is forwarded automagically over the VPN tunnel to the XP VPN client. For more details, read the HOWTO
http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/howto.html#scope

andrew.m.higgs

Thanks janjust,

That was a quick reply.

I was expecting the answer to be something along those lines. 🙁

I suppose each client would then need to be on a separate network? I.e. client1 would have subnet 192.168.0.0/24 and client2 would have 192.168.1.0/24? Is this correct? I was hoping I would be able to do it in a way such that all clients networks were setup identically.

Regards

janjust

yes that is how routing works, in general.
In theory it is possible to use the same subnet behind different client but you need extensive NATting to get that going - and NATting is one of the things that WinXP does not do very well without third-party addons.

andrew.m.higgs

Thanks. I think I will need to investigate those third party add-ons then. 😉

Thanks.