13 Nov 09 UK VPN Hosting

I’m going to be offering some VERY high end UK VPN hosting accounts in the next few weeks once I can get a site and signup form up and running. The VPN servers will run from within the same cluster as this site, and so you can test your ping time with ping www.adamsinfo.com which in my case from my London based BETHERE DSL connection gives a 16-17ms ping time. You can also grab http://www.adamsinfo.com/wp-content/10mb.test and http://www.adamsinfo.com/wp-content/100mb.test for speed tests. I’m planning on running OpenVPN as the server software but will additionally offer PoPToP if anyone really wants it. Compared to other VPN providers, this will be a reasonably expensive offering. This is on the promise that:

• The service will be thoroughly undersubscribed
• The connectivity will be very fast
• You can select as much bandwidth as you want from 512kbit up to 80mbit – assuming your ISP supports it.
• Your service can be configured to use compression and encryption if you wish, meaning even faster access for you. This can use a lot of CPU and RAM on our end
• Custom set up as you wish as well as NAT 1:1 dedicated public IP and reverse DNS
• Squid Caching Proxy if desired
• 99.9% uptime guaranteed or your month’s money back

Addition I will be running the multithreaded tcp tunnel server software for anyone who wishes to use it, which means that with the right settings/config at your end, you can balance your VPN access over multiple connections at your local end.

Contact me (adam [AT] adamsinfo [DOT] com) to register interest!

Tags: openvpn, poptop, pptp, uk vpn, uk vpn hosting, VPN

15 Feb 09 Linux PPTP (Poptop) VPN Setup with MPPE and MPPC

Here’s a quick guide that I write as I’m setting up PPTP/MPPE/MPPC on a Linux server. My preferred VPN technology is OpenVPN mainly because it’s so quick and easy to set up and use, however in some cases PPTP is required chiefly when the Client wants to use the inbuilt Windows VPN capabilities rather than having to deploy 3rd party software.

My server is a Debian (of course) etch machine, with 2.6.24 (from source) kernel. My client is Windows XP Pro SP3.
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Tags: 2.6.24, debian, iptables, kernel, Linux, masquerade, mppc, mppe, patch, ppp, pppd, pptp, pptpd, VPN

15 Sep 08 Quick Linux and Windows OpenVPN HOWTO and tutorial, including VPN routing

OpenVPN is a popular Windows/Linux VPN Server/Client pair. I think there’s a separate GUI available for it if you’re so minded. This howto will cover command line usage only.

I’ll provide example configuration based on a Linux server and a Windows client, however the same applies pretty easily if you wanted to mix and match.

On debian, apt-get install openvpn. On any other linux distro, use your own package manager or alternatively download from source and compile.
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Tags: 10.8.0.1, 10.8.0.2, apt-get, client, compile, compression, daemon, daemonize, debian, default gateway, distro, established, forward, generate, interface, IP address, iptables, ip_forward, keepalive, Linux, linux server, masquerade, nat, openvpn, package manager, ping, related, remote, route, route add, route delete, route print, routing, secret key, server, source, tap, tcp, tcpdump, traffic, tun, udp, VPN, vpn client, vpn server, windows, windows client

14 Sep 08 Linux virtualization, vmware, xen, hosting, and squeezing the most out of your resources

I’d guess that 90% of hosting providers ‘oversell’. This essentially means that should they have 1,000GB allocated, they might offer 15 packages of 100Gb to 15 of their customers, banking on the fact that no one will fully use their 100GB allocation – Selling 5 Virtual Machines with 256MB RAM on a 1GB host, assuming that no one will use their full RAM allocation. This is bad, because you’ll generally be able to confirm that you’ve been allocated the resources, but nonetheless benchmark tests will show that you’re just not getting them, and your environment will be sluggish and unresponsive. This is the same as airlines selling 110 seats on a 100 seat plane. When that 101st paying customer does show up to claim his seat, he’s stuck without a flight.

The general consensus is that a VPS is a cheaper and lower-grade option than a dedicated service, however VPSs have a number of undisputable advantages over dedicated servers and I’m going to discuss why almost all the dedicated machines I manage are hosts for a range of VPSs.
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Tags: 10mbit, adamsinfo.com, advantages, allocation, apache2, backup service, benchmark, bind, cheap, client, co-locate, colocate, config, CPU, datacenter, debian, dedicated, dedicated servers, disk access, disk IO, endpoint, environment, exim, host, Hosting, hosting providers, Intel, kernel, kernel upgrade, mailserver, mppc, mppe, MySQL, named, noc, oversell, packages, php5, pptp, processor type, Quad Core, racks, reboot, remote services, routing, seek time, spamassassin, system administrator, tick speed, virtualization, vmware, vmware free server, vmware gsx, VPN, vps, xen, Xeon