OpenVPN Support Forum

I have established a tunneled openvpn connection from my laptop in coffee houses & libraries to my desktop through my NAT router on my home network. I can ping both ways. I can browse using Firefox et al. My question is: how can I verify that browser traffic is in fact moving thorough my secure vpn and not the local network connection? Thanks for any light you can shed...

NB: Ubuntu Lucid LTS on both machines, Tomato firmware router.

go to http://whatismyip.com and check your IP - it should be the IP address of your home router

Thanks so much for your reply. I had done this, and just as I feared, I'm seeing a strange IP there...presumably the hot spot's. Your reply confirms my suspicions.

Sigh. Back to the forums. I guess I'll just use the teeny Smartphone interfaces and rely on CDMA anonymity and SSH for now.

I'm wondering if the issue could be the "login capture" imposed by libraries and coffeehouses that requires browser interaction/initiation of a local session of some sort to allow internet access. How does OpenVPN circumvent or mask this?

it doesn't.
if you need to go to a website first (like most hotel wifi systems also require) then simply go to google.com or whatever, wait for the internet connection to become active and THEN start the openvpn connection. I guess you could try to do this automagically using an "up" script in openvpn, but I don't think it'd be worth the hassle.