Dual Nic VPN Setup Questions

[nubian1]

I have a setup that I would like to achieve and need to know how to get it working.

My main workstation has two Nic cards in it, (N1 & N2).

N1----->Router---->DSL Modem---->Internet

N2----->Internal Device (PC, appliance, ect)

I wish to have any "device", such as another pc or appliance, connected via N2 to go through a VPN connection with internet connectivity, without affecting the normal non-vpn network, both intranet & internet, activities of the main workstation.

In essence any pc, device or appliance connected to N2 through I would believe a software solution or otherwise have access to a VPN tunnel that reach the internet, through N1 since N1 is the only nic with direct internet connectivity.

If such a software solution exists it would allow VPN tunnels through user selected nics only, in a multi-nic setup naturally, and have routing features that would allow the internet traffic to be passed through N1 without affecting the normal network operations of the workstation.

 

[imagoon]

Windows Server 2003 can do this. I have used it in really off the wall network requirements before. I do not know if XP, Vista, Windows 7 can do it however. No matter how much you don't want it to, the VPN tunnel will affect the workstation it is on because most windows programs are "too stupid" to know what to do otherwise and will not cleanly be able to chose the non-encrypted path.

Why can't you use a dedicated device to handle this?

 

[RebateMonger]

n.m.

 

[ccbadd]

Try using an appliance like Untangle or PFSense and do the routing in a virtual machine.

 

[nubian1]

Thanks for all the great responses. Here is what I've done.

I had a spere Lynksys WRT54G lying around and flashed the router with a modified version of Tomato Firmware 1.25 that includes VPN (via openVpn) support.
http://tomatovpn.keithmoyer.com/

I connected the Wan port of this router to one of the lan ports on my switch which in turn connects to another router which in turn is linked to my dsl modem.

Router-1(VPN)-->Gigabit Switch--> Router-0--> Dsl Modem--> Internet

Now any pc or network device wired to Router-1 will have it's data transmitted via a vpn tunnel to the vpn server I connect to but those which bypass Router-1 will not. This setup works great!

I will also explore the PFSense/Untangle setup via virtual machine just to experiment a bit.