Hosting/Making a VPN

[Cookieslapper]

A little bit of backstory;

 

I go to a technology based school (Awesome, right?) and we all get laptops as a part of their 'zero waste policy.' As per usual with a public school, numerous different sites are blocked and can only be accessed via VPN's (most notably chrome extensions). Sadly, as it is a tech school and some of my classmates are blithering idiots, people bragged about using a chrome extension called zenmate, and teachers and administrators heard and reported it to the IT guys who, no offense to them, aren't the brightest. (they once gave everyone at the school an admin-level user login, causing a shit storm of steam and RAT's.) The "IT professionals" simply blocked proxying on the network and blocked the pages and ip's of different chrome extensions which offered a VPN service. Fantastic.

 

So here's were the problem arises. No VPN means no bypassing blocked websites which means me = 

 

I happen to have a spare (somewhat decent) computer at home, and up/down fast enough to kill a roadrunner. The real question is, how do i go about hosting my own VPN?? I assume there is some way to host one, as people who run VPN companies do. So what do i do? It doesn't matter what OS the server runs, as long as I can use it on my school laptop, running Windows 7.

 

Thank you in advance for any and all help.

[Master Disaster]

Teamviewer.

Have it running on your home machine, connect to it on your laptop and browse the internet on your home machine.

[simson0606]

install something like ubuntu and openvpn connect, here's a nice guide which is fairly easy. i managed to do it when i wasn't that experienced with the ubuntu command line

 

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-openvpn-access-server-on-ubuntu-12-04

 

although, are you allowed to install software at your school? because this depends on that.

[PineappleHolidays]

Teamviewer.

Have it running on your home machine, connect to it on your laptop and browse the internet on your home machine.

I would immagine there are a lot of better ways , but that is an option

[Cookieslapper]

install something like ubuntu and openvpn connect, here's a nice guide which is fairly easy. i managed to do it when i wasn't that experienced with the ubuntu command line

 

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-openvpn-access-server-on-ubuntu-12-04

 

although, are you allowed to install software at your school? because this depends on that.

Am I? nope. Can I? yeah. Nothing anyone can do to stop me from bypassing login permissions. Local accounts trump all. But thanks for the tip, I'll look into it.

[simson0606]

Am I? nope. Can I? yeah. Nothing anyone can do to stop me from bypassing login permissions. Local accounts trump all. But thanks for the tip, I'll look into it.

isn't it pretty much the same in school

[Neil]

SSH Tunnel, my friend. SSH Tunnel.

[vandidant]

Yes, SSH indeed. Right now I'm using Sophos UTM which has a Remote Access feature; essentially uses SSH to tunnel you into the router where you can set it to allow you access to your LAN, WAN, another network at home, a specific device on your network, or any combination. After enabling the feature, you simply go to your external IP:443 and download the Sophos SSL VPN client, hit connect, enter the username/password you set, and you're in. You can also use PPTP if you want to use the Windows in-built VPN client, and I believe IPSEC also works if you use Windows Server Remote Access.

 

I'm pretty sure there are similar features for pfSense and DD-WRT.