How To Setup a Virtual Private Network in Linux

A VPN also called Virtual Private Network is used to add security and privacy to private and public networks.

Features of a good VPN:

To be sure you have a good VPN service, it must have the following features:

- Ability to extend a private network or security across a public network.

- It should be able to process, accept and receive data across the shared or public networks.

- functionality, security and management policies and shouldn't have a way of storing users data.

How Does VPNs Works?

A VPN works by establishing a virtual point-to-point connection through the means of a dedicated connections, virtual tunnelling protocols, or traffic encryption(ssl).

This tutorial is strictly for Linux. I don't know how it works on Windows but I am currently working on it and I may share it soon.

There are several methods of setting up VPN in Linux but I will be sharing the simplest of them using OpenVPN.

Step 1

Go to http://www.vpnbook.com in your browser

Step 2

Navigate to free VPN

Step 3

Now Download any of the free OVPN files. In my own case, I downloaded

• US2 OpenVPN Certificate Bundle (optimized for fast web surfing; no p2p downloading)

Make sure you note the user-name and password written at the footer of the file.

At this stage, I assume we all know how to extract a file.

Extract the zip folder to any directory you like. I will be extracting mine to Desktop.

After extracting it. Go to terminal and type

openvpn -- config name.ovpn

is the name of either of the .ovpn configuration youu wish to use including the extension.

openvpn –config vpnbook-us2-tcp80.ovpn

It will request for Username and Password, just fill in everything.

Visit any IP checker site to see your new location.

Please use this wisely and not otherwise. Thank you