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    Advice on VPN product to use.

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    • K
      kellcia
      last edited by

      As part of college project looking to create a site to site VPN from a UBUNTU VM installed on VirtualBox to my AWS VPC containing some EC2 instances. Any suggestions on what to use and install on the ubuntu VM to enable me to create the VPN tunnel. Dhould I be looking at something like NordVPN , ExpressVPN or does something like pfsense fulfil this. Ideally I would prefer to keep costs down and and probably also create a seperate VPN to Azure to compare and contrast.

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      • RicoR
        Rico LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance
        last edited by Rico

        Why do you think you need any VPN Provider for a Site to Site VPN?
        Fire up pfSense on your Amazon Cloud, configure OpenVPN as Server there, configure your Ubuntu as OpenVPN Client and that's it.
        The easiest way / best experience would be to have pfSense on both sides though.

        -Rico

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        • K
          kellcia @Rico
          last edited by

          @Rico Thanks for the feedback. Not really familar with this whole process of creating VPN's or site to site VPN's so just researching what options available. Seems to so many different ways to achieve it but not sure which is better than others. Yourn advice to have pfSense on both sides sounds interesting. Does it require some protocol like IPSec for security / encryption etc. Appreciate any other guidance.

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          • RicoR
            Rico LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance
            last edited by

            In pfSense you can go with IPsec or OpenVPN.
            Personally I like OpenVPN.
            Check out https://www.netgate.com/resources/videos/site-to-site-vpns-on-pfsense.html

            -Rico

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            • DerelictD
              Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate
              last edited by

              install and configure strongswan on ubuntu.

              This is not a pfSense question if the ubuntu endpoint is a requirement for your project.

              Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
              A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
              DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
              Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

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              • K
                kellcia
                last edited by

                @Rico said in Advice on VPN product to use.:

                N Provider for a Site to Site VPN?
                Fire up pfSense on your Amazon Cloud, configure OpenVPN as Serv

                Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like I could just install pfSense on my laptop and create a site to site VPN from my AWS (or Azure) VPC to the pfSense software. pfSense installation on laptop will in effect simulate my onsite premises (lab) connecting to the services provisioned in the cloud. I appreciate any suggestions you can share.

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                • A
                  akuma1x @kellcia
                  last edited by

                  @kellcia said in Advice on VPN product to use.:

                  Sounds like I could just install pfSense on my laptop and create a site to site VPN from my AWS (or Azure) VPC to the pfSense software.

                  Careful... pfsense, by itself, wants the entire hard drive of the computer you install it on. The only other way to do it, and retain the operating system that's already on the laptop, is to use VM software, then install pfsense inside that VM environment.

                  Jeff

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Yeah, pfSense would need to be a VM in VirtualBox. You could have the Ubuntu VM logically behind it so that can access resources in AWS.

                    But yeah you can go straight from Ubuntu to AWS using IPSec without pfSense at all if that's what the requirement is.

                    Steve

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                    • C
                      chrispeddler
                      last edited by chrispeddler

                      I agree with their suggestions. As I read somewhere, more than 90% of VPN providers default to OpenVPN. That's a good sign that privacy is strong but if you need options, you can also try NordVPN, SurfShark, ExpressVPN and other well known VPN services.

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                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        We don't really know what the goals of the project are / were so it's hard to advise usefully but...

                        If you just needs to access EC2 instances from a laptop you could install pfSense in AWS and then use OpenVPN to connect to it from almost anything.

                        Steve

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