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   ssh    ( 1 )

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SSH-BASED VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORKS

ssh contains support for Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnelling using the tun(4) network pseudo-device, allowing two networks to be joined securely. The sshd_config(5) configuration option PermitTunnel controls whether the server supports this, and at what level (layer 2 or 3 traffic).

The following example would connect client network 10.0.50.0/24 with remote network 10.0.99.0/24 using a point-to-point connection from 10.1.1.1 to 10.1.1.2, provided that the SSH server running on the gateway to the remote network, at 192.168.1.15, allows it.

On the client:

# ssh -f -w 0:1 192.168.1.15 true # ifconfig tun0 10.1.1.1 10.1.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.252 # route add 10.0.99.0/24 10.1.1.2

On the server:

# ifconfig tun1 10.1.1.2 10.1.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.252 # route add 10.0.50.0/24 10.1.1.1

Client access may be more finely tuned via the /root/.ssh/authorized_keys file (see below) and the PermitRootLogin server option. The following entry would permit connections on tun(4) device 1 from user 'jane' and on tun device 2 from user 'john', if PermitRootLogin is set to 'forced-commands-only':

tunnel="1",command="sh /etc/netstart tun1" ssh-rsa ... jane tunnel="2",command="sh /etc/netstart tun2" ssh-rsa ... john

Since an SSH-based setup entails a fair amount of overhead, it may be more suited to temporary setups, such as for wireless VPNs. More permanent VPNs are better provided by tools such as ipsecctl(8) and isakmpd(8).