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I would like some help regarding network configuration and approach.

I want to emulate the network I work on...an openvpn server behind a router with various local servers accessible only to users of the vpn.

What is the best mode of networking to use and would it possible to put a guest vm on the external side of the vm software router i.e. emulate an internet user accessing the VPN?

if possible I would like the vms to still have internet connectivity.

Many thanks,

Chris

Here is how I set this up to test a similar config some time ago.

Set up your network on the internal network in its own IP subnet. Configure a vm as a NAT router between this network and the physical LAN.

The machines in the inner subnet can acess the physical LAN (and thence the Internet) but machines on the public side of the NAT cannot access the inner subnet without using tunnelling. You do not need a vm to act as the vpn client. Any machine on the physical LAN can be used.

You are effectively using the physical LAN to emulate the public Internet. You are tunnelling through the physical LAN (your public network) to reach your private network.

Thanks, another question.

So I now have internal server guests and a smoothwall router guest (with an internal nic and bridged nic) all talking to each other internally.

Can I port forward requests from the host from the bridged nic to other internal guests using the router's internal nic?

I am not having any joy so far and wonder if it is a limitation/behaviour of internal networking?

Thanks,

Chris

Why are you trying to access the vms from the host? Don't you have any other machines on the network?

Port forwarding through the smoothwall should work just like it does on a physical network. The networking protocols don't change just because you are using a virtual network.

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of computers and devices connected by communications channels that facilitates communications among users and allows users to share resources with other users. The machines in the inner sub net can access the physical LAN (and thence the Internet) but machines on the public side of the NAT cannot access the inner sub net without using tunneling. You do not need a vm to act as the vpn client. Any machine on the physical LAN can be used.


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For connecting to remote desktop of another computer (via internet or network) and controls. Also connecting to VNCServer through Repeater or directly to VNCServer and a lot of other configuration options. For more details VNCServer

I described in my first post what I was trying to achieve...thanks to the first reply for pointing me in the right direction.

Rather than trying to connect the host to my virtual network I connected all my vms to the 'internal' network.

I now have an xp client on the external side of a smoothwall router connecting to the local network on the internal side of the router using openvpn. This helps me to reproduce my work network for testing.

Thanks for help.

Chris