Roll Your Own Home VPN?

[claudel]

So, I've done a bit of searching and am still not particularly clear on what's the state of the art here in 2012 as far as setting up a home VPN.

What I'd like to do is:

Run a server at home. I currently have a machine running OS X 10.7.4 for this. Cable ethernet to the world.

Be able to connect to it with my New iPad and various other devices over public wi-fi networks with minimal exposure.

My preference, if possible, is to use a modern ( l2pt/IPSEC ) protocol rather than PPTP.

I'd like sufficient bandwidth to adequately stream video from home to the iPad.

This will probably be the most demanding application for me.

I don't want to be stuck routing my VPN traffic thru a third party. I don't want to route
my traffic thru someone's commercial VPN service with a meter on it.

I'm willing to upgrade the server ( great excuse for a new Mini :thumbs: ) to Lion Server if need be
but I think I'd rather update my home router if there is a device that will handle the VPN
traffic in a manner that will keep the Apple stuff happy and provide local wifi and ethernet.

I don't really want to set up and deal with a Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, SunOS,
AIX, Commodore 64, TS1000 or other flavor of server.

I'd prefer to not have to jailbreak the iPad, but I'd consider it...

I'd just as soon stick with Apple, for now, so Apple compatibility is important...

Anyway, if anyone has successfully established such a home network I'd love some advice regarding
selection of gear, especially if there is a home/small business oriented router/Wireless AP that will do
my deeds with a minimum of heartburn.

I'm reasonably competent as far as installing & configuring...

TIA

 

[claudel]

Bump.

Nobody has their own homegrown VPN in their basement cloud?

I have iMac <> DD-WRT PPTP <> iPad working, but want to run IPSEC without a commercial man in the middle.

I'd like to have sufficient VPN bandwidth to occasionally run video to one or two remotes without performance issues.

 

[zphone]

You can use a device such as Iomega storecenter cloud edition to create an externally available cloud to access your movies and files off the iPad. I have not seen any home grown vpn but I was thinking the same way until I bought the Iomega. It satisfies 80% of my access needs which is good enough for now for me.

 

[Lagranger]

So I know this is a really late response to this thread, but I thought I'd post a reply to help anyone who comes across it.

OpenVPN.

It's a modern, open-source SSL-based VPN. There are a number of free ports of both the server and client piece available on a variety of platforms.

At the time of the OP's query, the only way to use OpenVPN on an iPad was to jailbreak it. However, early this year an OpenVPN client finally became available on the official App Store for free. (Thanks, OpenVPN.net!)

Just use your favorite search engine to look up 'openvpn ipad' to get started. In fact, if you're adventurous and have the necessary tech skills, you could even use a home router flashed with custom firmware (e.g. DD-WRT) as your OpenVPN server.

 

[claudel]

Great News.

Thanks much.

I'm already running DD-WRT, and I'll give the new IOS client a go.