OpenVPN compression - internet in tanzania

[shbris]

will soon be heading for dar es salaam for a few months, internet connections there are apparently quite slow

so was wondering how feasible it would be to run an openvpn server at home and use that for internet. how much compression of normal internet traffic would be achieved? i'm looking for a solution that will minimize the traffic on the dar side to increase speed, possible at the expense of CPU time at either end which won't be much of an issue

any thoughts or other possible solutions?

[Jay]

you could use terminal services at home RDP in and use the system in the UK to browse the net.

[shbris]

how is that on bandwidth though on the african side? windows 7 has RDP built in right...?

[Splash]

Indeed it does, and you could turn the "available bandwidth" right down to "modem" if your bandwidth is really tight. That said... if using RDP I'd be tempted to tunnel it through a VPN of some sort anyways, be that OpenVPN or Hamachi or something similar.

[ChrisN]

I run an OpenVPN server on my home connection - it's been running on the standard OpenVPN port with no complaints from Virgin for about a year and it works great. It is possible to compress all data sent over the connection (I think it uses LZO or something similar, so it's effective) - it's just one additional line in the server config. Just be aware that it'll have an effect on the battery life of your mobile devices as the CPU will need to do some extra work to compress/decompress all traffic sent over the VPN.

[qbie]

how is that on bandwidth though on the african side? windows 7 has RDP built in right...?

Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate have the RDP server built in, all versions can view an RDP session though.

If you want to be able to RDP into a machine at the same time as someone else is using it, you'd need to apply the RDP Concurrent Sessions hack. If you don't do that when you login the person currently sitting at the PC will be logged out.

Very useful, I use it to login to my PC at home while my dad is busy playing WoW .

Bandwidth-wise, RDP should disable some of the more advanced features if the connection is slow.. you turn turn colour depth down to 256 colours and disable desktop backgrounds and things to improve the speed.

q

[ChrisN]

After reading qbie's post, I guess I should clarify - the reason I use OpenVPN is so I don't have to leave anything like RDP exposed on a public-facing port. Considering Microsoft's track record when it comes to remote arbitrary code execution attacks, I wouldn't ever leave RDP listening publicly like that.

[shbris]

think i should be running only one session at once, cheers though.

battery life isn't such an issue, i'll have electricity.

ok i should have a few things to look at, got a few weeks so gonna try out RDP and openvpn

[ChrisN]

You're welcome By the way, OpenVPN can be a pain to set up if you're not familiar with how VPNs work. The instructions at http://openmaniak.com/openvpn_tutorial.php give a pretty thorough overview of all the server-side configuration options available.