I’m looking for the best way to setup a private vpn connection to my home PC so I can browse the internet from a remote location securely and unfiltered. Both machines I’ll be using are running windows 7. Can anyone suggest an article I could use to set this up? My thanks in advance!
Thanks Duckster! Using that technique how can I tell if my web traffic is actually going through the VPN tunnel rather than out via my remote location’s internet connection?
WAG.
You have a VPN connection from remote computer A to home computer B. Computer A will go through VPN. Home computer B is going out unfiltered unless you set up computer B to use a proxy server. Not a good idea since the initial VPN link will be slow and an additional proxy server will compound the slowness.
Regardless of whether you use a proxy, if your browsing is being routed through your home PC, when you visit a site like http://www.whatismyip.com, you should see an IP address assigned to your home equipment.
I’m going to have to disagree somewhat with Duckster though. If your VPN set-up introduces noticable delay, any additional delay introduced by a decent proxy will be negligible in comparison.
At a site that I’m familiar with, browser traffic is routed over a low cost, limited bandwidth link, while all other traffic goes out over the more expensive, faster links used for high priority, business-related traffic. Net result: if one were to set up a VPN connection in the manner Bongmaster suggests, it’s quite likely that despite the introduction of VPN, the browsing experience would be improved.
If your real goal is to bypass company security at the “remote location” AKA your desk at work, don’t be so sure that a VPN does the trick. Unless you personally control all aspects of the computer used at the ''remote location", they (company IT) could still be watching all your traffic. And taking screenshots. And keylogging.
That they *could * be tracking all that doesn’t that they are tracking all that. But the possibliity exists and needs to be considered.