I'm a bit of a network and Linux noob. With that said....the good news is that I have OpenVPN setup in a VM on a Win10 client. It appears to be working fine except for a few little things. I tested it by tethering my laptop to my phone and logging in remotely. It seems to work okay but I have a few questions... 1.) By default, is the traffic going through encrypted from other prying eyes when I'm on another network? So if I'm on say a work network or a hotel wifi if I'm surfing the web completely through the OpenVPN server am I secure? 2.) If I'm connected to a network where all ports are blocked except 80 / 443 will this OpenVPN allow me to get around that given I'm tunneling all traffic through the VPN? 3.) When I connect my laptop to the OpenVPN while on a different network (tethering via phone) I can see my local shares as if I'm at home but I have to put it in with the IP address to gain access. Another words I have to put in \\192.168.1.x to get to the shares. If I try using my mapped network shares that are \\HOMEPC they don't work. Not a big deal I made a shortcut on my desktop called local shares and it points to \\192.168.1.x but I'm trying to understand why it's doing that. 4.) To follow-up with question 3, I tested this using a family's PC. I use TeamViewer to access their computer. I can connect to the OpenVPN client. If I check "what's my IP" it correctly shows my home's IP and not the family's IP. Problem is I cannot see ANY of my network shares from my home on the family PC. Whether I try \\HOMEPC or \\192.168.1.x it just refuses to see. Why? Thanks for reading.
You are secure in the sense that the WiFi owner can't log your traffic ... He only sees one connection to your public IP at home but he can't for example log your traffic or see anything that happens in the tunnel. Even better... with OpenVPN you have a really good encryption suite attached, not that it would be needed. But even if someone would be able to get the PKI you'd still have the underlying SSL/TLS encryption. You just have to configure port 443 or 80 on your VPN server at home to be available to connect with your client. I mean you own your server right You need to setup a WINS server and query that one with your VPN clients (you should be able to enter that somewhere in the client config) for the NetBIOS names. Because NetBIOS is Lay. 2 broadcast ... Or simply edit the hosts files and enter all hostnames and their IPs for all the clients you are using. Can you explain this test more accurately please? Else see answer 3)
