There are many VPN services, free and paid, but if you prefer, you can set up your own VPN server and thus access it from other devices, wherever you are.
Let’s start with the basics, what a VPN is, and what are its advantages.
VPN is the acronym for Virtual Private Network, unlike other more cryptic computer words such as DNS or HTTP, they do give us quite precise clues about what they consist of.
The keyword here is virtual since this property generates the need for the VPN itself and allows VPN connections to offer you the multiple uses that we will see later.
To connect to the Internet, your mobile, PC, television, and other devices generally communicate with the router or modem that connects your home with your Internet provider, either by cable or wirelessly. The components are different if you are using your mobile’s data connection (which includes its own modem and talks to the telephone antenna) but the essence is the same: your device connects to another, which connects you to the Internet.
Basically, if we access the network from a VPN server, it will act as an intermediary between us and the server where the service we use is located, be it email, instant messaging, web pages …
Thus, if a website wants to know where we connect from, it will not know. Instead, you will get the data from the VPN server, which may be in another city or country. Another practical utility of accessing the internet via VPN is to set up a private LAN for work or games.
As I said, the demand for VPN services has grown and grows every day, so that the available offer is varied. What’s more, internet greats like Cloudflare have already launched their own free VPN.
But if you don’t want to depend on a third party, you can create your own VPN server at home. Obviously, it is not designed to use it right there, your home VPN server will be useful to access the internet if you travel to another country, another city, or move where you live. To do this, you will only need a connected computer, which can be the one you use normally or, better, one that you have recycled to use as a dedicated VPN server.
If you have a PC, old or new, with Windows installed, you should know that it allows access to a VPN server but it also serves to act as a home VPN server.
VPN server with Windows
To create a VPN server in Windows we must go to Network Connections. The fastest way is through the Run tool, which you can open with the Windows + R keys. Then we write ncpa.cpl and click on Run.
In the window that will open we have to press the ALT key to open the menu and then go to File> New incoming connection. The first thing we will see is the list of users on your computer. In that list, we can create users with their own names and password. Those users, if we check them, will be able to connect to our home VPN server.
After clicking Next, we must mark the only option that we will see in the next window, and which refers to those who access the VPN server that will do so through the internet. Then we click on Next again and we will have to choose which connections the PC will share to access the internet as a VPN server. In addition to the main one, we can include networked printers, for example. Finally, click on Allow access and that’s it.
Once we have our PC activated as a VPN server, we must tell our router to allow incoming connections of this type. To do this, you have to open port 1723 associated with the IP of the PC that acts as the VPN. For security, instead of that port we can enable another, such as 23243.
To connect to your home VPN server, you will have to indicate the IP of that PC. When it asks for your username and password, you must indicate the ones you have previously configured.
VPN with Mac
If you want to turn a Mac into a VPN server, you can also do it relatively easily, although we need a macOS Server instead of the usual version. You can buy, download and install it from the Mac App Store.
Once we are in macOS Server, we open the Server application, which is not in the user version of macOS. In the VPN section of the Services list, we go to VPN Host Name and indicate the IP of our Mac. Then, we edit the permissions to indicate which users can access the VPN server we are creating and create a password, the more complex the better.
Now we will have to go to the first category of the bar on the left, where the name of your Mac appears. In the Access tab, click on the More button and select VPN. For our security, we select the option Allow Connections From and Only some users, which we must add to the list below. The last step is to go back to the VPN section within Server and press the switch OFF to ON.
For the router to allow Internet access to our Mac, now a home VPN server, we must open the UDP 500, UDP 1701 and UDP 4500 ports.
Another possibility is to go to solutions such as VPN Server Configurator, which automate this process. Also, the advantage is that you can use it in macOS in its normal version.
More alternatives for Windows, macOS, and Linux. With OpenVPN we can turn our PC or Mac into a VPN server, although the installation and configuration process is complex and it is advisable to follow the official instructions step by step.
