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ACCC Virtual Private Network (VPN) Gateway and OpenVPN Clients

• About OpenVPN
• What does the VPN gateway do for me?
• What use does this have?
• Where to Download and How to Install the OpenVPN Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux Clients and Configuration Files

About OpenVPN

ACCC has installed a VPN gateway for use of UIC faculty, staff and students that need secure access to resources at UIC over a non-UIC Internet connection.

Previously, the ACCC distributed the Cisco VPN client; the new VPN gateway uses the OpenVPN VPN client, which is distributed through the ACCC Gateway Web site:
https://www.uic.edu/apps/openvpn

OpenVPN and the new VPN gateway work better than the old gateway and the Cisco clients did.

What does the VPN gateway do for me?
In short, the VPN client/gateway is used to encrypt data destined for UIC while it travels over the Internet.

While connected to the VPN gateway, the client software works with the operating system to determine when you are accessing an Internet location that the client should protect. When you are accessing such a location, the VPN client encrypts the data and sends it to ACCC's VPN gateway. As your information is flowing across the Internet to reach UIC, it is securely encrypted and is only decrypted once it reaches the VPN gateway.

For example, if you are at home and have started the VPN client to connect to the gateway (this is technically referred to as a tunnel) and use your Web browser to visit www.uic.edu, the portions of the connection that are encrypted are:

• The Web browser request to browse www.uic.edu until it reaches the VPN gateway.
• The Web page results from www.uic.edu after they are passed through the VPN gateway.

The web browser request from the VPN gateway to www.uic.edu and the reply from www.uic.edu to the VPN gateway would not be encrypted.

What use does this have?

• If you are doing any sensitive work that requires any information to be sent to UIC computers and this information isn't encrypted some other way, this would be a good way to protect that information as it travels over the Internet.
  
  
• Also, some protocols are disabled at the UIC border which means that you cannot access these from off campus. Microsoft Exchange email servers and on-campus Windows file shares are both blocked at the UIC-to-Internet border. The VPN is a solution in these instances as the traffic from your home computer is securely tunneled past these blocks. NOTE that in order for the VPN gateway to be of use to get around these port blocks, the administrator of the server at UIC must have specifically requested the ACCC Security office ( security@uic.edu) to allow this traffic.

Where to Download and How to Install the OpenVPN Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux Clients and Configuration Files

To use the VPN gateway, you must download and install the OpenVPN Client and your configuration file. There are links on the Web site to instalerl packages and also instructions on how to install and use OpenVPN for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

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2010-03-10  ACCC documentation

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