Hello everyone!

[caution: english is not my mother tounge ;]
We are 4 friends and want to play games over internet. Unfortunately
there are many games which only support LANs.
My idea is to put up a VPN so we are able to play the LAN-games over
internet.

After a short look-around I downloaded OpenVPN, because I expect it to
be able to act as a VPN-server under Windows. But while I read the
HowTos on it's homepage and some threads in this mailing list I got more
and more doubtful about getting it to work.

Sad but true, the only idea i have up to this moment is, that VPNs make
it possible for distant machines to communicate like they are on the
same subnet.
I'm not afraid to read english HowTos, but, for example, i'm not sure
wether to use bridged networking or tunneling with OpenVPN..

Maybe someone can give me a few hints what the VPN i need has to look like?
Thx a lot for that! 

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Why not just use the VPN capability built into Windows XP?

Mike Schumann

"iGen" <igen@gmx.net> wrote in message
 news:422660a0$0$26551$9b4e6d93@newsread4
.arcor-online.net...
> Hello everyone!
>
> [caution: english is not my mother tounge ;]
> We are 4 friends and want to play games over internet. Unfortunately there
> are many games which only support LANs.
> My idea is to put up a VPN so we are able to play the LAN-games over
> internet.
>
> After a short look-around I downloaded OpenVPN, because I expect it to be
> able to act as a VPN-server under Windows. But while I read the HowTos on
> it's homepage and some threads in this mailing list I got more and more
> doubtful about getting it to work.
>
> Sad but true, the only idea i have up to this moment is, that VPNs make it
> possible for distant machines to communicate like they are on the same
> subnet.
> I'm not afraid to read english HowTos, but, for example, i'm not sure
> wether to use bridged networking or tunneling with OpenVPN..
>
> Maybe someone can give me a few hints what the VPN i need has to look
> like?
> Thx a lot for that! 

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Mike Schumann wrote:

> Why not just use the VPN capability built into Windows XP?
Because I read in some of the threads, that the Windows build-in
VPN-capability only allows 1 client to be connected at the same time.

I didn't check this statement, but it was repeated more than one time.
That's why I took a look around and downloaded OpenVPN as a real
server-solution.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

iGen wrote:
> Mike Schumann wrote:
> 
> Because I read in some of the threads, that the Windows build-in
> VPN-capability only allows 1 client to be connected at the same time.
>
> I didn't check this statement, but it was repeated more than one
time.
> That's why I took a look around and downloaded OpenVPN as a real
> server-solution.

>
Best thing might be to buy a hardware VPN gateway that each of your
friends use as a router and VPN to each other.  If money is an problem,
you can use a central Linux box in a hub-and-spoke configuration.  I
haven't tried OpenVPN, so I'm not certain.  Be careful though, some VPN
setups won't work with games if the games aren't strictly
TCP/UDP-based, or if they use ethernet broadcasts, etc.  IPSEC may not
support every game whereas PPTP should (and Microsoft XP has a built-in
PPTP client).

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]