Unintentional Results - OpenVPN Server 64bit by peter_sm

A little background... I presently have several smoothwall firewalls (32bit and 64bit versions) at remote locations connected via IPSec. The IPSec implementation I believe is either OpenSwan or StrongSwan, not sure. IPSec is being used currently on 64bit smoothwall boxes until a newer 64bit version of Zerina OpenVPN addon is rolled out, although the 32bit version of Zerina is being used on other 32bit boxes.

One of my current plans was to use two personal SW firewalls and set them up VPN-in-VPN for testing, OpenVPN inside IPSec, but I didn't want to downgrade one of the 64bit boxes to a 32bit OS as it has a heavy workload and makes good use of the 64bit architecture. Then I decided to play around with peter_sm's OpenVPN 64bit Server plugin for unRAID and see what would happen and if it could establish a good VPN-in-VPN connection to at least the unRAID box.

I installed the plugin on unRAID with default settings, followed steps for RSA Install and Cert Generation, etc, and created a couple of users. At a remote location I installed the latest OpenVPN client application on a Windows 7 PC and copied the client zip file from the unRAID OpenVPN client folder location, saved and uncompressed to its own folder inside the config directory of the C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config location .

I did however edit the config file. username.ovpn file, and changed the WAN IP address to the internal LAN IP address of the unRAID box at the remote location. After initiating a successful VPN session from the local client to the remote unRAID box, everything functioned as expected and I was able to browse the network as I normally do with just IPSec.

For some reason I just had my doubts that what I intended to do, VPN-in-VPN, was actually successful. After all it's been months and I hadn't been able to use peter-sm's OpenVPN Server or Client successfully without being locked out of the unRAID box and things like Plex just can't be access by local or remote Plex clients. In addition even though peter_sm's OpenVPN plugins do a fantastic job for those who can make use of it, I just use my Smoothwall firewalls to handle VPN connections instead of inside the network to the unRAID box.

Now I am not certain if it was peter-sm's OpenVPN Server plugin implementation as designed by him, or if intended by the creators/developers of OpenVPN... I first did a proxy test for my IPSec connection here www.whatismyproxy.com and it showed my local WAN IP, but when I connect the second VPN it showed the remote WAN ip address of the Smoothwall firewall, which seems to indicate I am able to successfully proxy all my traffic from the remote location to the WWW and back through the remote VPN, VPN-in-VPN. I actually tried looking for a solution like this a while back that could be used with iPhones and Android phones, and tethering laptops and other devices to those phones.

Again, I may have stumbled onto nothing new, but I have not read anywhere that peter-sm's plugin, let alone OpenVPN, could be used in this way.... I suppose if it was not something by design, then with further testing and hopefully replicated by others, we may have a way to proxy all our remote and road-warrior device traffic through home or business networks. Perhaps someone with greater OpenVPN and networking experience can chime in and have a better explanation, and/or come up with something simpler for this type of use without the VPN-in-VPN setup.

Thanks.