Setting up a Personal VPN using OpenVPN
Security while browsing the web is an increasing issue. One of the most effective ways to protect yourself is by using a Virtual Private Network or VPN. Paid VPN service providers are expensive and some are not even necessarily secure.
This guide will walk you through the steps of setting up your own VPN using OpenVPN, the same robust VPN protocol that the paid providers use. We will be using DigitalOcean and Ubuntu 16.04.4 in this guide, but you can use other cloud hosting providers and a different Linux distribution if you wish. Keep in mind that the setup may vary depending on hosting provider and distribution.
Setting up Ubuntu on DigitalOcean
To start, log into your DigitalOcean account. Make an account if you don’t have one.
Next, click on Create and select Droplet. A Droplet is essentially just DigitalOcean’s fancy name for a Virtual Private Server or VPS.
You should arrive on a page to configure your Droplet. Make sure Ubuntu 16.04.4 x64 is selected under Distributions. It should be by default.
Next, you will be asked to select a size for your Droplet. If only you or just a few other people are going to be using this VPN, the smallest sized Standard Droplet should suffice. It costs $5 a month and comes with 1GB of RAM and 25GB of SSD storage. You also get 1TB of transfer, but DigitalOcean currently does not charge for bandwidth overage so it’s irrelevant.
VPNs generally do not take up or use much disk space so you can skip the next part about adding block storage.
Scroll down further and you will be prompted to choose a datacenter region. For the best performance, it’s generally good to select the region that is closest to where you will be when you’re using the VPN. If you’re not sure, you can test your speed to each of the regions here. Alternatively, you can use this tool which will give you a good comparison of the performance of each region.
Leave all the additional options unchecked. You can select Monitoring if you would like to get more advanced statistics on the performance of your Droplet.
Add an SSH key so you can SSH into your Droplet later. For help setting up SSH, check out the DigitalOcean guides here. Although the guide is for FreeBSD, it should work for Ubuntu. You only need to complete the first three sections. Additionally, you can learn more about SSH here.
Finally, give your droplet a creative name and click Create. You only need to create one Droplet.
Installing and Setting up OpenVPN
Setting up OpenVPN manually can be a long and arduous process. Luckily, a few awesome people on the internet have written open source scripts that automate the process.
Creating More User Profiles and Connecting to Your VPN
Still working on this part. Sit tight :)
Understanding What Your VPN Can Protect You From
Still working on this part. Sit tight :)