A GUI for N2N

This is a Czech site I am offering for viewing directly via Google Translate http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=cs&tl=en&u=http://www.vpnhosting.cz/index.php/N2n-na-VPNHosting.cz.html&act=url which actually does a pretty good job. The actual site of the N2N GUI, in Czech is http://www.vpnhosting.cz/index.php/N2n-na-VPNHosting.cz.html for those of you that understand it.

For those of you who do not know, n2n is a Layer Two Peer-to-Peer VPN. What this means is that you do not need a VPN server you can't get to directly using a potentially blocked VPN port from a network you do not manage (think organisation maintained LANs). Instead, you can 'get onto your VPN' anywhere which you have any sort of communication with your super-node server. Even if your current LAN uses a HTTP only proxy for access to the internet, N2N will still work, i.e. you can still VPN).

More information on this eunoic VPN is available on the Ntop Official website (of the authors Luca Deri and Richard Andrews) http://www.ntop.org/n2n/ who explain the topology beautifully and provide links to the source code if you have the ability to and wish to contribute.

I'm excited because 1. the Czech site is offering a free super node server, so you don't have to have a static IP address on a machine somewhere on the internet and 2. they are offering a free Graphical User Interface which I can only assume will allow N2N to run as a service instead of as a command line application. I also hope they have been able to bundle the TAP adapter driver and it's installation into the package as getting a reliable version from OpenVPN and installing it can prove more complicated than expected.

The source code has been available for some time and this project has been live for a number of years, but I'm not a programmer yet and couldn't contribute code but kept an eye out for news and this is certainly news worthy. These guys have made N2N accessible to the masses and I expect this will pick up very quickly, especially in places such as China where they are fire walled from the rest of the internet.

If none of this appears relevant to you, trust me, in time this will become a household name, I only hope that I am contributing to the project in some small but meaningful way by writing this note.

I'm very excited indeed.

I have even set a task on my management software to download and test it out, I'll be updating this site when I've had a go.