Setup a VPN for your iPhone/iPad or Computer

 The great thing about a netbook or an iPhone is that you can connect to the internet from anywhere, the bad thing is that most of this traffic is unencrypted. This unencrypted traffic is open to all the hackers, and all the web admins in the world. Luckily, there is a tool to counter this, every one of these devices can connect to a VPN, allowing encrypted traffic between your mobile device and your home network.

Step 1 Installing and setting up PPTPD on Ubuntu Server

ssh into your server, and install the package pptpd on your ubuntu server or desktop

sudo apt-get install pptpd

Next it's time to configure your settings on your pptpd server with the file '''/etc/pptpd.conf'''

sudo nano /etc/pptpd.conf

Find the bottom lines that say

#localip 192.168.0.100
#remoteip 192.168.0.290

or something like that. We need to uncomment these lines, and change the ip addresses so they look something like this

localip local_ip_address_of_my_server
remoteip ip_range_to_assign_to_clients

The localip should be the address your router assigns to your server (make sure that your server receives a static ip), while the remoteip should be a range within your routers assignment range, but out of the normal assignment range

i.e. my local ip is 192.168.0.100 whereas my router assigns ip addresses between the ranges of 192.168.0.1-101, so i would set up my configuration like 

localip 192.168.0.100
remoteip 192.168.0.102-202

the remote ip is outside of my routers normal range, but still within the total range. 

Comments

[spel3o]

Thank you so much! God, I think I was going to kill myself over all of the config files.. Plain clean and simple finally :)

[afernie]

You need to forward tcp port 1723 for pptp from your router to your ubuntu server.

[dtitzer]

Excellent write-up. I did this myself several months ago. I used no-ip.org to get DNS for my home ISP connection. Your write-up doesn't go into much detail on the external connection, but otherwise it's excellent. As advanced a topic as this, the reader should know about it.