Giganews VyprVpn on Linux with IPSEC and L2TP

I'm not a fan of PPTP, but unfortunately that's the only listed configuration option for giganews' VpyVpn service (http://www.giganews.com/vyprvpn/setup/linux/pptp.html). So the following are a few configuration files you can use to connect to vyprvpn using ipsec and l2tp. I tested with Ubuntu 10.04, OpenSWAN, and xl2tpd.

The /etc/ipsec.conf stanza

conn giganews
        authby=secret
        pfs=no
        rekey=yes
        keyingtries=3
        type=transport
        left=%defaultroute
        leftprotoport=17/1701
        right=us1.vpn.giganews.com
        [email protected]
        rightprotoport=17/1701
        auto=add

The /etc/ipsec.secrets stanza

%any us1.vpn.giganews.com: PSK "thisisourkey"

The /etc/xl2tpd/xl2tpd.conf stanza, be sure to replace giganews_username with your username

[lac giganews]
lns = us1.vpn.giganews.com
require chap = yes
refuse pap = yes
require authentication = yes
; Name should be your giganews username
name = giganews_username
ppp debug = no
pppoptfile = /etc/ppp/options.l2tpd.client
length bit = yes

The /etc/ppp/chap-secrets stanza, be sure to replace giganews_username and giganews_password with your username and password respectively

giganews_username us1.vpn.giganews.com "giganews_password" *

The /etc/ppp/options.l2tpd.client file

ipcp-accept-local
ipcp-accept-remote
refuse-eap
noccp
noauth
crtscts
idle 1800
mtu 1410
mru 1410
defaultroute
debug
lock
#proxyarp
connect-delay 5000

You can replace us1.vpn.giganews.com with any of the following end points, just make sure you replace all instances in the previous

us1.vpn.giganews.com for Los Angeles, CA
us2.vpn.giganews.com for Washington, DC
eu1.vpn.giganews.com for Amsterdam
hk1.vpn.giganews.com for Hong Kong

To connect you run the following commands ipsec auto --up giganews when that's successful connect l2tp echo "c giganews" > /var/run/xl2tpd/l2tp-control

If that's successful ppp will have replaced your default route to go out over ppp0 which represents your vpn connection.

Most of the instructions adapted from http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/networking/linux-l2tp.html