[MLB-WIRELESS] VPNs

[Dan Flett]

> [mailto:owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au] On Behalf Of Ben Grech
> >> I think the bigger problem is identifying someone who is 
> prepared to 
> >> be
> the
> >> other end of your tunnel.
> >
> > Agreed, as well as the fact that you'd want to be careful to keep 
> > track of your usage if you're on a capped plan.. :-)
> 
> I'll give it a go! There's only so much damage 16 or 32kb/sec 
> can do to your quota. ;) And for most users, uploads aren't 
> even counted. Barry, where do I sign up??

Good on you Ben!

Another thought regarding VPNs.  What we're really aiming to do is to create
a tunnel.  If you think about it, encryption isn't really necessary.
Encryption can be tricky to configure with certificates and certificate
authorities and whatnot.  And it eats up processor resources - a major
consideration if you're using a WRT54G.  Since the traffic you're tunnelling
is public, there's not much point encrypting it. Encryption can be left to
the application layer - users can use https, ssh or their own VPNs, where
necessary.

OpenVPN can be configured to work without encryption; setting it up is far
easier than for when encryption is required.

I even wonder if using your Internet connection to tunnel between two
networks is even against the average "fair use" policy.  You're not really
sharing your Internet access as such - people who use the VPN are only using
non-internet resources at the other end of the tunnel.  For all your ISP
cares you could just be using peer-to-peer software to download pr0n.  If I
then give that pr0n to someone else am I then sharing my Internet access?

> > If we got some going it might be interesting to be able to plot the 
> > VPN
> links
> > on the maps too.
> 
> The interfaces already cater for it, showing them differently 
> on the maps would be good though. Different colour or something?

Sure, but does it really matter?  A link is a link.

Cheers,

Dan

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