A VPN or Virtual Private Network according to its acronym, is a service that you can enjoy if you are connected to the Internet.
You will also be able to protect the traffic you generate and your data online so that you can enjoy surfing the net privately, as well as having unrestricted access to any content on the web that you want to enjoy. But in order to do so, the first thing you must do is learn how to install the VPN with OpenVPN.
Because the IP address is exposed to the network when you visit a website, anyone can have access to your personal information such as the country and city where you live, hence the importance of having an OpenVPN connection.
It is for this reason that we invite you to read this article where we will show you how to connect to it from your Android Smartphone to an OpenVPN connection.
What are the benefits of having an OpenVPN server?
Having an OpenVPN server will allow you to connect to the Internet securely from any network, no matter if it is via cable or Wi-Fi, if it has WEB/WPA encryption or without encryption.
All the traffic that is generated will be encrypted through a tunnel from the PC you are using to your home and from there it will go to the Internet. It is as if you were connected to an Internet at home. However, you can also set up and connect to a free VPN from your Android phone or iPhone.
Of course, to enjoy this service some factors are necessary, such as having a good upload speed of at least 30 Mbps or higher. You must also have a public IP address, this is because if you have CG-NAT you will not be able to connect because you will not be able to do port forwarding on the router.
When you have an OpenVPN server in your home, you will also be able to access all the shared resources you have, for example Samba servers, FTP and even access to the printer and IP cameras that you have connected, among other things. In addition, all access permissions will be as if they were physically installed in your home. But how to create, configure and connect to a VPN on Windows?
How to connect to an OpenVPN server from an Android device?
Having an OpenVPN server on your cell phone is very practical if you connect to public and open networks. When you establish this type of connection, all the traffic you are generating will automatically be encrypted and you will be protected from hackers who want to access it.
Due to the fact that by default Android does not allow OpenVPN connections to be established, to do so it will be necessary to use an application that is in charge of connecting and managing the traffic.
Although you can find several applications in the Play Store that help you for this purpose, this time we will use the official OpenVPN client.
First of all it is important that you make sure that you have the user certificates copied to the internal memory of your cell phone, this is in case you use this connection method, and also make sure that you have copied the corresponding .ovpn files with all the configuration the client’s. The steps to follow are quite simple:
Step 1
The first thing you should do is simply download and install the program. Once you have it installed, you must run it and you will automatically see a window on the screen.
Step 2
In order to establish the connection you must go to the menu and open it and you must select the “Import” option and then the “Import profile SD card” option
Step 3
You will be able to see that a file explorer appears on the screen of your Smartphone. Using this explorer, you must search the storage memory for the configuration of your device.
Step 4
Along with the certificates, the files that should be present are the following: README.txt, ca.crt, client1.ovpn, client1.crt, client1.key and ta.key.
You must locate the one named client1.ovpn and select it. And to finish, you must click on the “Connect” option and in this way the connection with the VPN server that you have configured will be established.
If everything is configured correctly, you will see a window similar to the previous one on the screen. But, if an error occurs, you should review not only the server configuration but also the client configuration, this is because it is very difficult to identify the reasons for the failure since this client does not have a detailed log of activity.
