Setting up a VPN

[Marinello12]

First post on this forum and feel a bit bad for asking a question but would really appreciate it if you guys helped out. I have been using Linux for a while now and it has become my main OS and I'm looking to purchase a VPS or Dedicated server to play around with as im starting a computer science course soon.
I was wondering if anybody in this forum would guide me to any guides on setting up a VPN on the dedicated/VPS server so that I can create an account and use it to encrypt my traffic and change my IP, I have looked around for a while and have only found info on connecting to another computer through VPN to use there network and applications but I don't think that is the type of VPN I'm looking for.

Help would be much appreciated

-Marinello12

[Kloschüssel]

Hi and welcome,

there is only one kind of VPN (Virtual Private Network).

Surely there are different kind of encryptions and tunneling methods that each have their advantages and disadvantages. But they all have in common that they connect two hosts/networks through a transparent tunnel that transports packets from one host to the other such that it looks like the hosts are physically close, but in reality can be located each on the other end of the world.

So please explain what "your VPN" should do?

[Marinello12]

I think I'm wanting the PPTP type VPN as it allows me to create user accounts for different people, I want to be able to have all of my internet traffic though the server, would PPTP be sufficient.

[Irithori]

a) pptp is somewhat windows specific (although there is a server for linux)
b) microsoft deprecated that long ago
c) pptp has been broken. It is not secure, which defeats its purpose as a VPN

My suggestion in general would be OpenVPN,
if there are some proprietary blackboxes involved (aka commercial hardware appliances), you might need to setup ipsec.

[Kloschüssel]

I'm not sure if I got your point. Is this dedicated server at your home location or remote? If you want to add users, why not SSH into your server?

Who should provide internet to who? You provide internet to your server or your server to you? Why do you want to tunnel it anyway? It's largely slower and despite you have security concerns of your local network I don't see any real usecase.

BTW: +1 Irithoris comments