Setting up a VPN connection. How to set up a VPN connection in different versions of Windows

Deploying a VPN server on an enterprise network is a more complex task than setting up basic services - NAT, DHCP and file servers. Before getting down to business, it is necessary to clearly understand the structure of the future network and the tasks that must be solved with its help. In this article we will touch on the main questions, the answers to which you should know before you approach the server. This approach will allow you to avoid many typical problems and thoughtlessly copying settings from the example, and will also allow you to correctly configure the VPN specifically for your tasks and needs.

What is a VPN?

VPN ( Virtual Private Network) - virtual private network, this abbreviation hides a group of technologies and protocols that allow you to organize a logical (virtual) network on top of a regular network. It is widely used to differentiate access and improve the security of corporate networks, organize secure access to corporate network resources from the outside (via the Internet) and, more recently, by city network providers to organize Internet access.

What types of VPN are there?

Depending on the protocol used, VPNs are divided into:

PPTP(Point-to-point tunneling protocol) - a point-to-point tunnel protocol allows you to organize a secure connection by creating a special tunnel over a regular network. Today, this is the least secure of all protocols and is not recommended for use in external networks for working with information to which access to unauthorized persons is undesirable. To organize the connection, two network sessions are used: a PPP session is established using the GRE protocol for data transfer, and a connection is established on TCP port 1723 to initialize and manage the connection. In this regard, difficulties often arise in establishing such a connection in some networks, for example, hotel or mobile operators.

L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) is a Layer 2 tunneling protocol, a more advanced protocol based on PPTP and L2F (Cisco's Layer 2 Handover Protocol). Its advantages include much higher security due to encryption using the IPSec protocol and combining the data channel and control channel into one UDP session.

SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol)-- a secure socket tunneling protocol based on SSL and allows you to create secure VPN connections via HTTPS. It requires an open port 443 to operate, which allows you to establish connections from anywhere, even behind a proxy chain.

What is VPN usually used for?

Let's look at a few of the most commonly used VPN applications:

Access to the Internet. Most often used by metropolitan network providers, but it is also a very common method in enterprise networks. The main advantage is a higher level of security, since access to the local network and the Internet is carried out through two different networks, which allows you to set different security levels for them. With the classic solution - distributing the Internet to a corporate network - it is practically impossible to maintain different levels of security for local and Internet traffic.

Access to the corporate network from outside, It is also possible to combine branch networks into a single network. This is actually what VPNs were designed for; it allows you to organize secure work in a single corporate network for clients located outside the enterprise. It is widely used to unite geographically dispersed departments, provide network access for employees on a business trip or vacation, and make it possible to work from home.

Consolidation of corporate network segments. Often, an enterprise network consists of several segments with varying levels of security and trust. In this case, a VPN can be used to communicate between segments; this is a much more secure solution than simply connecting networks. For example, in this way you can organize access for a warehouse network to individual resources of the sales department network. Since it is a separate logical network, all the necessary security requirements can be set for it without affecting the operation of individual networks.

Setting up a VPN connection.

The clients of the VPN server will most likely be workstations running Windows, while the server can run under Windows, Linux or BSD, so we will consider the connection settings using Windows 7 as an example. We will not dwell on basic settings, they are simple and understandable. Let’s dwell on one subtle point.

When connecting a regular VPN connection, the default gateway will be specified for the VPN network, that is, the Internet on the client machine will disappear or will be used through a connection on a remote network. It is clear that this is at least inconvenient, and in some cases can lead to double payment for traffic (once on a remote network, a second time on the provider’s network). To exclude this point on the bookmark Net in protocol properties TCP/IPv4 press the button Additionally and in the window that opens, uncheck Use default gateway on remote network.

We would not dwell on this issue in such detail if it were not for the massive occurrence of problems and the lack of basic knowledge about the reasons for this behavior of VPN connections among many system administrators.

In our article we will look at another pressing problem - the correct configuration of routing for VPN clients, which is the basis for the competent construction of enterprise-level VPN networks.

A Virtual Private Network is a virtual private network that is used to provide secure connections within corporate connections and Internet access. The main advantage of a VPN is high security due to the encryption of internal traffic, which is important when transferring data.

What is a VPN connection

Many people, when they come across this abbreviation, ask: VPN – what is it and why is it needed? This technology opens up the possibility of creating a network connection on top of another. VPN works in several modes:

node-network;
network-network;
node-node.

Organization of a private virtual network at network levels allows the use of TCP and UDP protocols. All data that passes through computers is encrypted. This is additional protection for your connection. There are many examples that explain what a VPN connection is and why you should use it. This issue will be discussed in detail below.

Why do you need a VPN?

Each provider is able to provide user activity logs upon request from the relevant authorities. Your internet company records every activity you do online. This helps relieve the provider of any responsibility for the actions carried out by the client. There are many situations in which you need to protect your data and gain freedom, for example:

The VPN service is used to send confidential company data between branches. This helps protect important information from being intercepted.
If you need to bypass the service's geographic location. For example, the Yandex Music service is available only to residents of Russia and residents of the former CIS countries. If you are a Russian-speaking resident of the United States, then you will not be able to listen to the recordings. A VPN service will help you bypass this ban by replacing the network address with a Russian one.
Hide website visits from your provider. Not every person is ready to share their activities on the Internet, so they will protect their visits using a VPN.

How VPN works

When you use another VPN channel, your IP will belong to the country where this secure network is located. When connected, a tunnel will be created between the VPN server and your computer. After this, the provider’s logs (records) will contain a set of incomprehensible characters. Analyzing the data with a special program will not produce results. If you do not use this technology, the HTTP protocol will immediately indicate which site you are connecting to.

VPN structure

This connection consists of two parts. The first is called an “internal” network; you can create several of these. The second is the “external” one, through which an encapsulated connection occurs; as a rule, the Internet is used. It is also possible to connect to the network of a separate computer. The user is connected to a specific VPN through an access server connected simultaneously to the external and internal networks.

When a VPN program connects a remote user, the server requires two important processes to go through: first identification, then authentication. This is necessary to obtain the rights to use this connection. If you have fully completed these two steps, your network is endowed with powers that open up the possibility of work. In essence, this is an authorization process.

VPN classification

There are several types of virtual private networks. There are options for the degree of security, implementation method, level of operation according to the ISO/OSI model, and the protocol involved. You can use a paid access or a free VPN service from Google. Based on the degree of security, channels can be “secure” or “trusted”. The latter are needed if the connection itself has the required level of protection. To organize the first option, the following technologies should be used:

PPTP;
OpenVPN;
IPSec.

How to create a VPN server

For all computer users, there is a way to connect a VPN yourself. Below we will consider the option on the Windows operating system. This manual does not provide for the use of additional software. The setup is carried out as follows:

To make a new connection, you need to open the network access viewing panel. Start typing the words “Network connections” into the search.
Press the “Alt” button, click on the “File” section in the menu and select “New incoming connection”.
Then set up a user who will be given a connection to this computer via VPN (if you only have one account on your PC, you will need to create a password for it). Check the box and click “Next”.
Next, you will be asked to select the connection type; you can leave a checkmark next to “Internet”.
The next step is to enable network protocols that will work on this VPN. Check all the boxes except the second one. If desired, you can set a specific IP, DNS gateways and ports in the IPv4 protocol, but it is easier to leave the assignment automatic.
When you click on the “Allow access” button, the operating system will automatically create a server and display a window with the computer name. You will need it for connection.
This completes the creation of a home VPN server.

How to set up a VPN on Android

The method described above is how to create a VPN connection on a personal computer. However, many have long been doing everything using their phone. If you don’t know what a VPN is on Android, then all the facts described above about this type of connection are also true for a smartphone. The configuration of modern devices ensures comfortable use of the Internet at high speed. In some cases (to run games, open websites), proxy substitutions or anonymizers are used, but for a stable and fast connection, a VPN is better suited.

If you already understand what a VPN on a phone is, then you can proceed directly to creating a tunnel. This can be done on any device that supports Android. The connection is made as follows:

Go to the settings section, click on the “Network” section.
Find the item called “Advanced Settings” and go to the “VPN” section. Next, you will need a PIN code or password that will unlock the ability to create a network.
The next step is to add a VPN connection. Specify the name in the “Server” field, the name in the “username” field, set the connection type. Click on the “Save” button.
After this, a new connection will appear in the list, which you can use to change your standard connection.
An icon will appear on the screen indicating that there is a connection. If you tap on it, you will be provided with statistics of received/transmitted data. You can also disable the VPN connection here.

Video: Free VPN service

Found an error in the text? Select it, press Ctrl + Enter and we will fix everything! Many people don't know how to set up vpn connection, however, this is not a tricky matter, but it requires certain skills. First, let's figure out why such a connection is needed. VPN literally translates as virtual private network. As the name suggests, it serves to create a tunnel between two computers, through which information is transmitted in encrypted form. Thus, the confidentiality and anonymity of all transmitted information is ensured. Now let's look at the basic steps for VPN settings.
1. Make sure your home computer is properly connected to the World Wide Web.
2. After making sure the connection is working, go to the Start menu.
3. Select the “Control Panel” folder.
4. Find the “Network Connections” folder.
5. Select the link to create a new network connection.
6. In the first window, click on “Next”.
7. Select “Connect to a network at the workplace” and again click on the item “Connect to a virtual network”, again the “Next” button
8. In the next window you need to select an option depending on your connection type:
do not dial the number to pre-connect;
dial the number to pre-connect.
9. Enter a name for the new connection.
10. Then you need to enter the ip of the remote computer or its name in a special field.
11. Select users for whom this connection from this computer will be possible.
12. If necessary, place the icon opposite creating a shortcut on the desktop.
Your computer will then prompt you to connect immediately, but we should decline this. Select the shortcut for our connection on the main screen and right-click on it. Select the “Properties” tab. We indicate the method for restoring the connection depending on the type of network connection. We save the result.
Setting up VPN Windows finished, now to connect you just need to click on the desktop shortcut or the icon in the connections “Start” menu.

Please note that the task here is not to explain everything thoroughly and technically correctly, the task is to explain it “on the fingers” so that even novice users can understand. I hope it worked out. If you have questions, ask them in the comments.

The essence of how a VPN server works is as follows:. For example, you want to go to the website yandex.ru. More precisely, connect to a server with IP 77.88.21.11 (residents of the eastern regions of Russia may be sent to a server with a different IP, but that’s not the point). When working without a VPN, your computer sends a packet (you could say a request) directly to the server with the address 77.88.21.11 and receives a response from it. When working via a VPN, your computer sends a packet to the VPN server, the VPN server sends the exact same packet to 77.88.21.11, 77.88.21.11 sends a response to the VPN server (because it was the VPN server that originally sent the request), and the VPN server sends this packet to your computer.

What do we have? Requests to the address 77.88.21.11 are sent not by your computer, but by the VPN; accordingly, the server 77.88.21.11 records the IP address of the VPN server, and not your computer.

One possible reason to use a VPN is need to hide your IP address.

Other uses – need to change traffic route. Let's take an example from life. The author of this article lives in the city of Orel (Central Russia) and wants to connect to the yunpan.360.cn server located in Beijing. The author uses (or rather, used at that time) the services of the Beeline Internet provider. As the tracert yunpan.360.cn command entered into the Windows command line showed, outgoing Internet traffic to this Chinese server goes through the United States. The trace does not show how the traffic goes back, but judging by the ping, it follows approximately the same route. Below is a screenshot from VisualRoute 2010.

This routing is due to the fact that Beeline did not pay backbone Internet providers for a more direct channel to China.

With this route, large packet losses occur, the speed is low, and the ping is huge.

What to do? Use a VPN. This is a VPN server to which we have a direct route, and from which there is a direct route to yunpan.360.cn. I (the author of the article) searched for an acceptable solution for a very long time and eventually found it. A virtual server was rented (what this is will be discussed later) in Krasnoyarsk (immediately imagine where the city of Krasnoyarsk is located) from a hosting provider. Tracing to the server showed that the traffic was traveling across Russia, the ping was 95 ms (I had a mobile LTE (4G) Internet, on a wired Internet the ping would be 5-10 ms lower).

Ping– this is the delay of the Internet signal. The delay for the passage of Internet traffic in both directions (round trip) is measured. It is impossible to measure the delay in only one direction using standard means, since your computer sends a request to the pinged server and records the time it takes for the response to arrive.

In traces, the ping to each point (to each point of the route, otherwise called a hop-hop) is also shown for traffic in both directions.

It often happens that the route is different in different directions.

Next, a trace was made from the Krasnoyarsk server to yunpan.360.cn. Ping is around 150 ms. The tracing showed that traffic from the Krasnoyarsk server to the Chinese one goes through direct peering (internetwork interaction) between the Transtelecom and China Telecom providers.

Here is this very trace (made from Linux):

tracepath yunpan.360.cn
1?: pmtu 1500
1: srx.optibit.ru 0.361ms
1: srx.optibit.ru 0.381ms
2: border-r4.g-service.ru 0.392ms
3: kyk02.transtelecom.net 0.855ms asymm 5
4: 10.25.27.5 112.987ms asymm 8
5: ChinaTelecom-gw.transtelecom.net 125.707ms asymm 7
6: 202.97.58.113 119.092ms asymm 7
7: 202.97.53.161 120.842ms asymm 8
8: no reply
9: 220.181.70.138 122.342ms asymm 10
10: 223.202.72.53 116.530ms asymm 11
11: 223.202.73.86 134.029ms asymm 12
12: no reply

What do we see? The Krasnoyarsk server is hosted by optibit.ru (hosting is a service for placing and renting server capacity) and is connected to the Internet provider “Igra-Service” (g-service.ru). Igra-Service, in turn, sends traffic to yunpan.360.cn through the large Russian backbone provider Transtelecom (for which it pays him money). TTK directs traffic through its direct connection to the network of the Chinese backbone provider China Telecom, the ChinaTelecom-gw.transtelecom.net hop domain tells us this.

Let's remember what our problem was. Our traffic to that Chinese server went through the USA, the speed was low. What I've done? I installed a VPN on this Krasnoyarsk server. And configured my computer to work through this VPN server. What happened? Now the traffic to yunpan.360.cn did not go along the old Orel-Moscow-USA-China route, but like this:

first to the VPN server – Orel-Krasnoyarsk,

then from the VPN server to Beijing - Krasnoyarsk-Beijing.

Did you get the point? We have changed our route. What did this give? The speed of the outgoing connection from me to yunpan.360.cn has increased. Ping has been reduced. The result was achieved.

How to determine your route? For beginners, the easiest way to do this is to use the VisualRoute program, which can be found on the Internet in both licensed and hacked forms.

You need to run this program and set the following settings:

It will turn out like this:

Using this table you will see which countries the traffic passes through. Once again, I draw your attention to the fact that the trace shows the route of outgoing traffic only (that is, traffic from your computer to the server). The route in the opposite direction can only be shown by a trace made from the server to your computer. VisualRoute has a small glitch: it often shows Australia (?) as a country when it cannot determine the real geoposition of the node.

VPN– Virtual private network – a virtual private network is, one might say, your own network on top of the Internet, all traffic within which is encrypted. You can study this technology in detail. To explain it very simply, then:

your computer and VPN server connect over the Internet
all traffic between you and the VPN server is encrypted
The VPN server sends it to the destination
your IP is hidden and the IP address of the VPN server is visible instead

It is recommended to use a VPN when working through free (or simply someone else's) WiFi, since it is possible to intercept all traffic passing through the WiFi router. And when using a VPN, all traffic will be encrypted. Moreover, if you go to yandex.ru, vk.com and google.ru without a VPN, then connections to yandex.ru, vk.com and google.ru will be recorded at the level of the router and your Internet provider. When using a VPN, all connections go to the VPN server address.

There are many paid VPN services available. Their advantages include only ease of use. Disadvantages include high cost and lack of 100% confidentiality (you can write a lot, but what actually happens on the VPN server, whether traffic is intercepted, cannot be guaranteed). The inability to change the IP address in a couple of clicks should also be considered a disadvantage of paid services.

Let's compare the cost of our self-configured solution and paid VPN services. The latter cost around 300 rubles. per month. Our solution will cost $0.007 per hour. If we don’t use VPN right now, we don’t pay. If used for 2 hours every day for 30 days, this pleasure will cost us 30-50 rubles.

We will do the following:

We rent a server for VPN.
Let's set up a VPN on it.
We will use them and pay only for each hour of actual VPN use.

Step #1. Server rental.

No, we will not rent a full-fledged server. We rent virtual server – VPS(virtual private server). In many cases, hosting websites on the Internet or for other purposes (including organizing a VPN) does not require large server capacities, but you need to customize the server operating system. Several operating systems cannot run simultaneously on one computer (including a server, because it is the same computer, only usually more powerful). What should I do? Virtual machines come to the rescue. This technology allows you to run an operating system within an operating system, which is called virtualization. In the case of servers, analogues of virtual machines are also created - virtual servers.

There are several common virtualization technologies. The most common are OpenVZ, KVM, Xen. Roughly speaking, Xen and KVM create their own “hardware imitation”, their own OS, etc. for each virtual machine. In the case of OpenVZ, a common OS kernel is used, as a result of which some functions (for example, making changes to the OS kernel) become unavailable, or they can be enabled or disabled only for all VPS at once. VPS on Xen and KVM are, as a rule, more stable in operation, but the difference is significant only for large projects for which server fault tolerance is critical.

VPS on OpenVZ is always cheaper, since one virtual server requires fewer resources. Due to the lower price, we will turn our attention to VPS based on OpenVZ.

Attention! Some hosting companies (companies that provide server rental services) deliberately block VPN operation on OpenVZ-based servers! Therefore, before renting such a server, you need to check with the support service (with a good hosting they should respond within 15 minutes, maximum an hour) whether the VPN will work.

To work on a personal VPN server, a minimum configuration is enough - 256 MB of RAM and a 0.5-1 GHz processor. However, not all hosting providers provide VPS with 256 MB of RAM: many have a minimum tariff of 512 MB of RAM. Such a VPS will be more than enough for us.

What other criteria for choosing a VPS exist? As you already understand, Internet traffic will constantly “walk” from you to the VPS and back. Therefore, the main canals must have sufficient capacity in both directions. In other words, the speed of the Internet connection between your computer and the VPS must be sufficient to perform the tasks you require. For everyday comfortable work, 15 Mbit/s is enough, and if you are going to download torrents via VPN, then you may need all 100 Mbit/s. But! If you and the VPS are on the networks of different Internet providers (especially in different cities), it is unlikely that the backbone networks will “stretch” more than 70 Mbit/s within Russia (or your country) and more than 50 Mbit/s with servers in Europe.

Most hosting services require monthly payments. It is worth noting right away that the price range is very large with approximately the same quality. We will use services with an hourly rate: $0.007 per hour of our server’s work. Thus, if we use VPN for 2 hours every day, then we will pay about 30 rubles per month. Agree, this is not 350 rubles/month for a paid VPN service!

First of all, you need to go to the website and register:

Next, a page will open on which you need to enter your bank card details. Without this, the system will not work and will not allow you to take advantage of the bonus 10 dollars (more on this later). You can specify any data, the system will “eat” fake data.

In this case, an amount of several rubles may be blocked on your card, which will then be returned. Charges from your card will only be based on the fact of using the servers.

What to do if you don’t have a bank card? Get yourself one, it automatically gives you a virtual card, the balance of which is equal to the balance of your wallet. You can top up your wallet almost anywhere, see.

However, if you enter your Qiwi card details into DigitalOcean, the system will spit it out, citing the fact that DigitalOcean does not work with prepaid and virtual cards. In this case, you need to top up your balance by $5 via PayPal by paying with a Qiwi card.

After all this, on the same page in your DigitalOcean personal account, enter the promo code DROPLET10, which credits us with 10 dollars, which we can fully use on the servers without fear of additional charges from our card.

Ready! Now let's move on to creating a VPS. Watch the video tutorial:

When creating a server, choose Ubuntu OS version 14.04, and not any newer one, incl. do not select 04/16.

Server location		Domain for ping
Frankfurt, Germany	http://speedtest-fra1.digitalocean.com/	speedtest-fra1.digitalocean.com
Amsterdam 1, Netherlands	http://speedtest-ams1.digitalocean.com/	speedtest-ams1.digitalocean.com
Amsterdam-2	http://speedtest-ams2.digitalocean.com/	speedtest-ams2.digitalocean.com
New York-1, USA	http://speedtest-ny1.digitalocean.com/	speedtest-ny1.digitalocean.com
New York-2	http://speedtest-ny2.digitalocean.com/	speedtest-ny2.digitalocean.com
New York-3	http://speedtest-ny3.digitalocean.com/	speedtest-ny3.digitalocean.com
San Francisco, USA	http://speedtest-sfo1.digitalocean.com/	speedtest-sfo1.digitalocean.com
London, Great Britain	http://speedtest-lon1.digitalocean.com/	speedtest-lon1.digitalocean.com
Singapore	http://speedtest-sgp1.digitalocean.com/	Speedtest-sgp1.digitalocean.com

Note. For most residents of Russia and the CIS countries, Amsterdam or Frankfurt will be suitable (ping to Frankfurt in most cases will be slightly less than to Amsterdam). I recommend that residents of the Russian Far East test Singapore and compare the performance with European servers.

The location of servers abroad will allow you to use a VPN to bypass government bans on visiting certain sites (if this is relevant to you).

DigitalOcean includes 1 terabyte (1024 GB) of traffic in the price (see). For most, this will be enough. Other hosting providers have formally unlimited traffic, but it becomes unprofitable for them when the threshold of 1-2 TB/month is reached.

That's it, we ordered VPS. Congratulations. Now it's time to move on to setting it up.

Step #2. Setting up a VPN.

Don't be intimidated, the process of setting up your own VPN is as easy as two-twos!

In the video tutorial above, we connected to our server using Putty. Now let's continue.

Copy and paste (by right-clicking the mouse, as we did in the video tutorial) the command:

Now copy and paste the following into the file editing window that opens:

Press Ctrl+O, then Enter.

Press Ctrl+X.

Copy and paste the command:

Enter 1 and press Enter. We wait. According to the system requests, enter the desired login and press Enter. Same with the password. For the questions “[Y]/[N]”, enter Y and press Enter. After completing the setup, our login and password and server IP address will be shown.

Ready! VPN is configured!

Now open the Windows Network and Sharing Center:

Select the settings for a new connection:

Select “Connect to a workplace”:

We're waiting a little. We now work via VPN! To make sure of this, we go to and make sure that our IP address shown to us matches the IP address of our VPS.

Now attention! Through our DigitalOcean personal account, we can turn off our VPS (droplet in DigitalOcean terminology), however, even for a server in the off state, funds are written off at the standard rate. So we'll backup our server, delete it, and when we need the VPN again, we'll restore it from the backup!

Let's move on to server management (the DigitalOcean control panel is located at cloud.digitalocean.com, you can enter it through the Sign In button on the main page of digitalocean.com in the upper right corner).

We need to create a backup (snapshot) of our VPS. But to do this, you first need to turn it off.

We wait about a minute until the server turns off. Then go to the Snapshots section, enter a custom name for the snapshot and create it:

For each gigabyte of “weight” of our VPS, 2 cents will be charged when creating a snapshot. Creating a backup (snapshot) will take a few minutes.

Now we delete the server:

All! No more money will be deducted from us for anything.

What to do when you need a VPN again

We need to create a new VPS from the backup we made before.

Click “create droplet”:

Now, as before, enter any server name in Latin letters without spaces, select the first minimum tariff, the region must be the same, the same as the one in which we previously had a server.

Just below, click on the name of the photo we took (it was gray, but should turn blue):

...and click the big green “Create droplet” button.

We wait about a minute.

Let's see if the IP address of our server matches the previous one. If yes, then in Windows we simply resume the previously created connection:

If not, then right-click on the name of our connection and change the IP address to a new one:

Enter the new IP and click “OK”:

Attention! Now, to turn off the VPN, we don’t need to make a backup copy, we just delete the server right away, and next time we’ll restore everything from the old snapshot. It is not necessary to shut down the server before deleting. Just in case, this is the procedure in the screenshots:

We removed the VPS while not using the VPN. Now let’s restore it from the old snapshot:

Again we check whether the old IP is still there and continue working.

On the same server (or another one) you can raise your personal proxy, for example, to the 3proxy software base, but this is not the topic of this article.

Found a typo? Highlight and press Ctrl + Enter

Virtual Private Networks are private remote networks, encrypted in special ways, with foreign servers. They provide connections at high speeds. They are used by Internet surfers to log in anonymously and visit blocked sites. Let's look at how to set up a VPN on Windows through different programs. This possibility exists even if it is not officially supported by the provider.

What is a VPN?

To configure it correctly, you need to understand the features and operating principles of the service. A VPN connection is a local network that connects several computers. The operating principle is based on a router that provides IP to all connected PCs.

Thus, it becomes almost impossible to determine the IP from which the user accesses the network, and it is possible to bypass most blocking programs. This occurs due to encrypted traffic packets, the keys for receiving which only the server has, from where requests are sent in the specified directions.

How to use on different Windows OS?

First you need to connect to the VPN server. This can be a home or remote PC. Providers that support such a service issue logins and passwords to their subscribers. In this case, the setup process is extremely simple. It is enough to fill in a few cells with the correct data.

Windows 7

This version is the most common. The question of how to set up a VPN on Windows 7 interests many. This is done through the control panel:

At the top, change the images to "large icons".
Find “network center” - “new connection settings” - “connection to a workplace”.
Two methods are offered - through direct dialing or a global network. You need the latter - it will allow you to learn more about VPN.
Server details required. The myip website will help you determine your IP. Indicate any location – network performance does not depend on this information.
Enter the login and password issued by your provider. When using your own server, the information is specified independently. Then you need to set “remember password” and save.

Detailed and step-by-step video instructions!

Now the connection will appear among the available ones. If there are several accounts on the computer, additional adjustments will be required through the control center. On the left you need to select “change adapter settings” so that a list of all available connections appears. Click "file" then "new incoming connection".

If there are several accounts, the system will prompt you to select a user. Having done this, click “add”. Then you will need a login, name (any name will do), password, and confirm the actions.

Now it remains:

Select the connection option - via the Internet.
Configure protocol – TCP\IP
Click “properties”, allow access for callers, set IP. If this is not done automatically, register a random output of 192.168.200.1 to 192.168.200.100.
Confirm the actions and click “allow access”.

These are the main steps of the procedure that can be followed on other versions of the OS.

The process is very simple and is carried out through the control panel. Once you click "Connection Wizard", select your private virtual network and follow the prompts. If your provider works with VPN, the name must correspond to that specified in the contract. Call the network home, work, like a PC.

Windows 8

The eighth version is automated, so the instructions on how to set up a VPN on Windows 8 are simple:

At the bottom, find the corresponding icon that looks like a monitor.
Find “Network Control Center” - “create and configure a connection” where the network parameters change.
Confirm your PC's direct connection to the Internet.
Specify the name of the work environment by changing the options. The same values are entered as for other OS versions.

The process completed successfully.

For those who find it difficult, watch the video instructions.

Windows 10

Here the procedure is different. It combines auto-tuning with user-specific settings. It is enough to know your login, password, and server address. The tenth version ensures stable operation of this service through providers that do not work with VPN. You need to download the appropriate program. It will be accepted and adapted by the OS.

Further actions:

Start - Settings - Network and Internet. Select VPN from the list that appears on the left.
Click + to add a new connection. Enter the parameters in the window that appears. They will be provided by the administrator or provider. Specify the provider, type of VPN, login information.
Save the changes, return to the network management menu, click “change settings”. Select connection properties by right-clicking.
Select the line IP version 4, then properties.
Leave the general settings as default and click “advanced”. Remove the “use default gateway” market. Confirm.

A special icon will appear on the panel. Activation takes a few seconds and occurs without entering a login password.

Windows Vista

How to set up a VPN on Windows Vista? Through Start, enter the “Network and Sharing Center”, then “Establish a connection or network”. Next you are interested in “connecting to a workplace” - “use my connection”. They will offer to install or defer. Click the second option. Enter your login information.

To select a VPN, you just need to enter network connection management. You can also create a shortcut there.

VPN services

Many providers do not provide such a service, trying to control the location of subscribers and save transmitted information. Therefore, utilities that make it possible to use a VPN service based on an existing connection are very popular. They involve changing the IP address and transmitting data over an encrypted channel. Such services help to successfully bypass blocking by providing access to closed services. The utility can be installed on any OS, PC or smartphone.

There are many programs, among which it is worth highlighting several that are recognized as the best:

ZenMate;
ZenVPN;
Spotflux.

ZenMate is a convenient extension for Chrome, Opera, Firefox browsers. This is a convenient service that is provided for free or for a fee. The speed depends on the selected service package. The extension pleases:

stable connection;
long test period;
a wide list of countries;
automatic settings of parameters with the possibility of manual adjustments;
using one subscription for different devices.

Hide.Me is an option that advanced Internet users will prefer. It can be precisely adjusted manually. There is limited and unlimited traffic. When choosing unlimited, 5 simultaneous connections are allocated - companies will appreciate this solution. This software is convenient:

emergency disconnect option;
free mode;
expanded support for encryption protocols.

Beginners will prefer Hotspot Shield. It's a highly customizable option that installs and downloads automatically. It supports a stable, long-lasting connection and blocks ads for free. HTTPS encryption is offered, so the protection of personal data is ensured. Bypasses all restrictions set by the provider.

ZenVPN is suitable for those who prefer privacy when using the Internet. This utility is relatively free - only 250 MB per day is provided, if you need more, you will have to buy a special package.

Spotflux offers a secure internet connection. By choosing this software, you don't have to worry about security even while using Wi-Fi. An additional advantage is the compression of packet traffic, which allows you to save it if there are limits.

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