How does openvpn work

When you connect to the internet, particularly on a public network, there is a risk involved in transmitting sensitive data across the network. No single tool or encrypted connection to the internet can guarantee your security and privacy, and OpenVPN is no different. Note: Some of the links in this article are affiliate links, which means that at no extra cost to you, I may be compensated if you choose to use some of the services listed. I only recommend what I personally use and I hope that the free information provides value to you!

For example, if you leave your home to go out to eat, there are certain things you will consider: the safety of the path, the right mode of transport, what you need to take with you, etc. Similarly, when data travels through a channel, it follows certain rules. What is OpenVPN when compared to each of the protocols listed above?

OpenVPN was developed in as an open project, which means that anyone can use and critique its code. This has given rise to a community of programmers who regularly test, improve, and update the protocol. This is the core strength of any open-source software. In the same way that Wikipedia benefits from the power of community to verify facts and correct any errors, so OpenVPN benefits from this community of security specialists. It is possible to use OpenVPN freely since it is open source, which means you are free to use it if you follow the conditions in the software license agreement.

Your network traffic is routed through your ISP's servers, which can log and display everything you do online. ISPs can also fall victim to attacks by cyber criminals: If they are hacked, your personal and private data can be compromised. This is especially important if you regularly connect to public Wi-Fi networks. You never know who might be monitoring your internet traffic and what they might steal from you, including passwords, personal data, payment information, or even your entire identity.

You should rely on your VPN to perform one or more tasks. The VPN itself should also be protected against compromise. These are the features you should expect from a comprehensive VPN solution:.

Since humans have been using the internet, there has been a movement to protect and encrypt internet browser data. The US Department of Defense already got involved in projects working on the encryption of internet communication data back in the s. At the internet level, local networks and devices could be connected to the universal network — and this is where the risk of exposure became clear. In the following year, Wei Xu developed the IPSec network, an internet security protocol that authenticates and encrypts information packets shared online.

Contiguous to Singh-Pall developing PPTP, the internet was growing in popularity and the need for consumer-ready, sophisticated security systems emerged. At that time, anti-virus programs were already effective in preventing malware and spyware from infecting a computer system. However, people and companies also started demanding encryption software that could hide their browsing history on the internet.

The first VPNs therefore started in the early s, but were almost exclusively used by companies. However, after a flood of security breaches, especially in the early s, the consumer market for VPNs started to pick up. According to the GlobalWebIndex , the number of VPN users worldwide increased more than fourfold between and In countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and China, where internet use is restricted and censored, one in five internet users uses a VPN.

One of the biggest drivers for VPN adoption in recent years has been the increasing demand for content with geographical access restrictions. For example, video streaming services such as Netflix or YouTube make certain videos available only in certain countries. With contemporary VPNs, you can encrypt your IP address so that you appear to be surfing from another country, enabling you to access this content from anywhere.

A VPN encrypts your surfing behavior, which can only be decoded with the help of a key. Different VPNs use different encryption processes, but generally function in three steps:.

There are many different types of VPNs, but you should definitely be familiar with the three main types:. Often not all employees of a company have access to a company laptop they can use to work from home. During the corona crisis in Spring , many companies faced the problem of not having enough equipment for their employees.

In such cases, use of a private device PC, laptop, tablet, mobile phone is often resorted to. In this case, companies fall back on an SSL-VPN solution, which is usually implemented via a corresponding hardware box. The prerequisite is usually an HTMLcapable browser, which is used to call up the company's login page. HTML-5 capable browsers are available for virtually any operating system.

Access is guarded with a username and password. A site-to-site VPN is essentially a private network designed to hide private intranets and allow users of these secure networks to access each other's resources. Site-to-site VPNs are also useful if you have two separate intranets between which you want to send files without users from one intranet explicitly accessing the other.

Site-to-site VPNs are mainly used in large companies. However, they are the most effective way to ensure communication within and between large departments.

Connecting via a VPN client can be imagined as if you were connecting your home PC to the company with an extension cable. Employees can dial into the company network from their home office via the secure connection and act as if they were sitting in the office. However, a VPN client must first be installed and configured on the computer. This essentially shortens the tunnel phase of the VPN journey. Instead of using the VPN to create an encryption tunnel to disguise the existing internet connection, the VPN can automatically encrypt the data before it is made available to the user.

It prevents third parties from accessing and compromising the network connection and encrypts data all the way to the provider. It also prevents ISPs from accessing data that, for whatever reason, remains unencrypted and bypasses any restrictions on the user's internet access for instance, if the government of that country restricts internet access. The advantage of this type of VPN access is greater efficiency and universal access to company resources.

For example, customers of the company cannot even tell whether the employee is at work in the company or in their home office. A VPN can help you bypass censorship and restrictions by allowing you to connect to a server in a different country.

By doing this you can go online as if you were in that other country. This way you can gain access to websites and services that are not available in your own country. Some online services also restrict access to their content in certain regions. This happens with streaming services that only have broadcasting rights in certain countries and not in others.

If you are on holiday or you moved to a different country , you might be unable to view your usual streams. A VPN will also enable you to connect to the internet via servers in your home country, so you can watch your favorite show or access blocked websites again.

It also works the other way around: if you want to gain access to websites or streaming services from a different country for example to watch a different version of Netflix , you can do so with a VPN. Downloading certain Torrents is illegal in some countries and more than ever before downloaders are tracked down and sometimes even prosecuted.

Of course, we are not advocating any illegal actions. However, we do understand people want online privacy and anonymity, not just when browsing the internet, but also when uploading and downloading files. To make sure nobody knows what you are downloading or uploading you can use a VPN. Because of the encrypted traffic and the rerouted IP address you can download anonymously with a VPN. Advertising networks such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter are constantly collecting information about you through your online traffic.

With this information, they can show you tailored ads but more importantly, they are free to sell this information to a third party. By encrypting your data using a VPN these networks will have a harder time collecting information on you. They will also have less influence on what you see online.

More and more companies are giving people the possibility to work from home, or abroad for instance. Some people connect to the internet via a VPN to access the company network at home.

This enables people to work from home safely and efficiently. To read more about the different reasons why people use a VPN please read our article on the subject: What are the advantages of a VPN? A VPN has a lot to offer when it comes to privacy and security. The same is true for services like Facebook. This means Google Maps can see exactly where you are. There are also more advanced ways that are used to identify internet users, such as browser fingerprinting.

Moreover, a VPN can slow down your internet. Your data has to be sent through the VPN server, which means it can take slightly longer to end up where it needs to be. However, there are several effective ways to increase internet speeds while connected to a VPN.

VPNs are banned in some countries. There are also websites, apps and services that will deny you access if you use a VPN. In other words, a VPN does significantly improve your online privacy and safety and is a vital part of your privacy and security precautions.

Fortunately, we have an article that highlights these measures and helps you to be anonymous online. You may wonder how safe you are with a VPN provider. Your internet traffic is redirected and runs through the servers of the VPN provider. The provider can see everything you do if it would want to. However, there are VPN services that abuse the data that travels through their servers and sell your data to advertisers, for example. This is especially the case with free VPNs.

These are often not safe. Before using a VPN, it is therefore important that you do research in advance. After all, a VPN redirects your connection through a remote server. This takes longer, so it could slow down your internet connection. All VPNs we recommend there have proven to work perfectly and cause little to no delays. Streaming, gaming, and browsing will go as fast as normal, only with increased freedom, security, and privacy. If your internet speed is artificially restricted by your ISP or another party, a VPN can actually make your connection faster.

The VPN ensures this limit no longer applies to you, so you can use the full potential of your connection. After all, the service enables you to become a lot more anonymous online, which can be quite useful for hackers and online criminals.

On the contrary: many official companies and businesses work with VPNs and recommend their use. Many countries consider the use of a VPN completely legal. Conducting illegal activities while using a VPN, however, remains illegal. While the VPN gives you more anonymity online and makes it a lot harder for officials to trace you down, the downloading in and of itself is still illegal.

There are a couple of countries that do consider the use of a VPN illegal. VPN connections use an encrypted connection also called a tunnel. There are several ways protocols in which such a VPN connection can be set up. The most common VPN-protocols are:. Setting up your own VPN connection is simpler than it might seem. Your VPN provider will do most of the work for you. First, you will need to find a VPN service that you like.

On our site you can find reviews of the different providers as well as some recommendations. When you find a VPN that fits your needs, you subscribe to their service and download and install the software they provide.

Most VPN providers offer software for all types of devices and operating systems. Within this software, you can choose which protocol to use and which VPN server you wish to connect to.

Now you can use the internet in a safe and anonymous manner, free from any restrictions or censorship that your geographical location might impose! We tested these providers extensively and found them to be very suitable for beginners, as they are easy to understand and set up , while also being very fast. Moreover, these two VPNs allow you to secure multiple devices with a single subscription and offer a day money-back guarantee.

This way you can try them for a month without being stuck to a long-term subscription. Furthermore, using the links and buttons on our website will get you a discount with these providers.

You can check out our extensive reviews on our review page. The latter also happens to offer one of the best free VPN subscriptions. You can read all about these in our article about free VPN providers. Create an account and make sure you have your log-in info at hand. Visit the website of your VPN provider to find the necessary software. The installation may vary, depending on your device and operating system.

If you want to know exactly how a VPN works, keep on reading. We have tested most major VPN providers of this moment on their usability and quality. Most good VPN providers offer trials so you can check out their service free of charge. They offer several thousand fast and stable servers, applications for all devices, and a great customer service.

This VPN also works with Netflix , so you can unblock all your favorite shows. ExpressVPN has a day money-back guarantee, so you can try it out before getting a lengthier subscription. ExpressVPN aims to offer you the best quality, and that comes with a price tag.

This subscription allows you to protect five of your devices with ExpressVPN. You can read more about this provider in our full review of ExpressVPN. This good and trustworthy service offers high levels of security.

Its software looks sleek while also being easy to use. Moreover, the applications are user-friendly and well-structured.

Read more about this provider in our full NordVPN review. NordVPN also offers more advanced options. For instance, NordVPN offers dedicated IP addresses and obfuscated servers, which make circumventing geo-restrictions, such as those enforced by Netflix, easier.

NordVPN has a day money-back guarantee. They also have very affordable deals, especially on their long-term subscriptions. Surfshark has earned a third place in our top 5. The VPN-software that Surfshark offers is very user-friendly. You might want to watch one of the countless movies and series on the American Netflix.

Aside from their standard VPN service, Surfshark offers plenty of additional features. To give you a short summary: Surfshark is a fantastic VPN for every beginning VPN user but is also suitable for the more experienced user who wants to have a wide array of possibilities at their disposal. Would you like to try out Surfshark? Click the button in the box below to visit their website. Installing this can be a challenge.

If you need help installing a VPN on your router, you can consult our article on this topic. And then there are also quite a few companies that offer business VPN packages. We like to help and have tested many VPN providers already. You can find more information about testing and the results in our VPN review section.

We also state under which jurisdiction each VPN provider falls and whether the VPN provider is located in a 5, 9 or 14 eyes country ; the governments of these countries exchange information. The jurisdiction may have implications for the privacy of VPN users, as each country has different privacy laws.

In practice, there are therefore differences in which user data VPN providers store. This is just a small selection of the available VPN providers. At VPNOverview. In addition, there are also some VPNs that are linked to questionable governments.

Choosing a reliable VPN is therefore a must; after all, you redirect all your internet traffic via this party. The two men talked, and came up with a business plan. That is, even if the computers are remote from each other, in another office, another country, the other side of the world, it can safely connect the systems together via a secure encrypted tunnel.

Your online activity just looks like regular web traffic. Properly implementing modern web encryption is a huge task, and fortunately OpenVPN doesn't try, instead handing off most encryption tasks to the very comprehensive OpenSSL library. One of the major advantages of OpenVPN is its flexible and configurable design, which gives VPN providers and, sometimes, users a huge amount of control over how the service works. And it supports all the network standards you need.

Need IPv6 , as well as IPv4 support? OpenVPN can be set up to cope, no problem, and it'll get you connected in most situations.

OpenVPN connections are set up by configuration files which accept many different commands, giving you all kinds of ways to deal with tricky situations. To take one example: suppose you can't connect, maybe because the server is down.

OpenVPN supports setting a custom timeout before it gives up the attempt, so you could maybe wait a long time for servers you know are slow, a few seconds for others. It can set the number of times to retry, and a number of seconds to wait between retries.