Stop Broadcasting Your Passwords at the Coffee Shop

I am writing this from a cafe in Grünerlœkka. The coffee is strong, but the security hygiene around me is weak. A quick look at a packet sniffer would reveal a terrifying amount of cleartext traffic flying through the air. POP3 emails, FTP credentials, unencrypted HTTP sessions—it is all there for the taking.

If you are a systems administrator or a developer working remotely, connecting directly to your production servers over public WiFi is professional suicide. You need a tunnel. Specifically, you need OpenVPN.

While PPTP is built into most OSs, it has known vulnerabilities (MS-CHAPv2 is not exactly a vault). IPSec is a nightmare to configure through NAT. OpenVPN is the sweet spot: robust SSL/TLS security, highly configurable, and it traverses firewalls like a ghost.

Why Latency Kills VPN Performance

Most people grab a cheap VPS in the US or Germany for their VPN. This is a mistake. If you are sitting in Oslo, routing your traffic through a server in Frankfurt adds unnecessary milliseconds to every packet round trip. Secure Shell (SSH) becomes laggy. Typing feels like wading through molasses.

Physics is stubborn. To keep your shell responsive, you need your termination point close. Hosting your VPN endpoint on a VPS in Norway keeps your latency often under 10ms. At CoolVDS, we see pings from downtown Oslo to our data center consistently dropping below 5ms. That is the difference between a sluggish session and one that feels like localhost.

The "War Story": The Permissions Nightmare

In 2008, I tried setting up an OpenVPN server on a budget provider using cheap container virtualization. It was a disaster. The provider hadn't enabled the tun/tap device kernel modules on the host node. I spent six hours debugging route tables only to realize the virtual network interface refused to come up.

This is why architecture matters. On CoolVDS, we ensure full kernel control. Whether you are running Xen or optimized containers, the tun device is available out of the box. No support tickets required.

Step-by-Step: Deploying OpenVPN on CentOS 5

Let's build a bridge. We will use CentOS 5.5 (or Ubuntu 10.04 LTS if you prefer `apt`). We are aiming for a routed tunnel using UDP for speed.

1. Install the Repositories

OpenVPN isn't in the base CentOS repo. You need EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux).

2. The PKI Infrastructure (Easy-RSA)

Security relies on keys. Copy the easy-rsa scripts to a safe directory to generate your Certificate Authority (CA), server key, and client keys.

Pro Tip: When it asks for 'Common Name', use your server's hostname. Do not leave it blank.

3. Server Configuration

Create /etc/openvpn/server.conf. We will use the server directive to automatically handle IP allocation.

Security Note: We are using 1024-bit Diffie-Hellman keys here for compatibility, but consider 2048-bit if you are paranoid about three-letter agencies. Also, `comp-lzo` compresses traffic, which can speed up web browsing significantly.

4. Routing and NAT

The VPN connects, but traffic goes nowhere without IP forwarding and NAT. Edit /etc/sysctl.conf:

Apply it with sysctl -p. Then, configure iptables to masquerade traffic leaving your VPS interface. This turns your CoolVDS instance into a secure router.

Data Sovereignty and Datatilsynet

Beyond technical speed, there is a legal reality. Under the Norwegian Personopplysningsloven (Personal Data Act), hosting data within national borders provides clarity on jurisdiction. While the US Patriot Act allows for broad data seizure, Norwegian privacy laws supervised by Datatilsynet are far more consumer-centric.

By tunneling through a Norwegian VPS, you aren't just gaining speed; you are keeping your traffic under a legal framework that respects privacy. For businesses handling sensitive client data, this isn't optional—it is due diligence.

Final Thoughts on Performance

Encryption costs CPU cycles. On an overloaded server, OpenVPN throughput will tank. This is where the "steal time" metric comes in. If your host is overselling CPUs, your VPN will stutter.

At CoolVDS, we monitor host node load religiously. We use high-performance SAS RAID arrays to ensure that logging (a heavy I/O operation for VPNs at high verbosity) never bottlenecks the network. You get the raw compute power you pay for.

Don't let a slow connection compromise your security. Spin up a rock-solid instance in Oslo today.

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