Introduction
There are many tutorials available on how to setup a VPN. Unfortunately the vast majority of tutorials are not an end to end set of instructions which is what is needed by many when setting up a VPN for the first time. There is nothing more frustrating than doing everything as instructed only to find out there was a whole other set of information that was assumed knowledge. This set of instructions will hopefully fill those gaps to a large degree and at least provide a series of points to explore further if your setup differs from what is presented here.
The scenario that we will work with here is an office server that needs to be setup as a VPN server so that employees can logon to the office domain from home.
Setup Requirements
- An internet service with a static public IP address. The “static” part means that the IP address does not change, which means the VPN client later knows what IP address to connect to. Imagine trying to mail a letter home when your address changes every 6 months, the mail won’t get there! You need to make sure your ISP has given you a static IP address otherwise setting up a VPN is impossible.
- Router
- Server running Windows Server 2016