[ale] SSH tunnel vs VPN

Alex Carver agcarver+ale at acarver.net
Fri Nov 6 10:59:46 EST 2015


It does happen to be more than one machine but I've done things like
setup bookmarks and such to reach them via their individual SSH tunnels.

Maybe it's worth a test run if I fire up an old machine and see what
happens.

On 2015-11-06 07:54, Jim Kinney wrote:
> If I only need to connect back to one machine, ssh is fine. If it's more
> than one, a VPN is easier to use.
> On Nov 6, 2015 7:42 AM, "Alex Carver" <agcarver+ale at acarver.net> wrote:
> 
>> I'm once again mildly pondering a VPN for home use but I wonder if it's
>> worth the effort over just having SSH with tunnels.
>>
>> The main purpose for either one is to let me get back to my home network
>> from my phone so I can do things like view security cameras, check/send
>> email, and some other minor things.
>>
>> As far as I can tell from the documents, I only need to open a UDP port
>> inbound on the firewall to establish the connection because the server
>> should then set up an outbound connection back to the client (solving
>> the NAT traversal and stateful firewall issues, please correct me if I'm
>> wrong on this).
>>
>> Is it actually worth the setup or should I just stick with SSH?  The
>> current setup is an Android phone with ConnectBot and a bunch of
>> tunnels.  If I were to go VPN I would get a new machine (likely a SBC
>> like a RasPi) to be the server, the firewall is still a separate device.



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