VPN Licenses

[John Driessen]

Hi,

I have a question on the needed licenses for external VPN-providers (NordVPN, ExpressVPN, etc).
If I create a VPN-server of such a provider on OPNSense (22.7) do I need only 1 license (server) or more (server + clients).
I expect the last, but hope for the first.

Thanks for your support.
John

[j_s]

Well, your question is a bit confusing.

If you are going to be a VPN server yourself, you don't need any kind of license or anything.  All of the software is free and you just set it up.

If you're wanting to connect to a paid VPN service like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, etc. then you have to have an account with them.  As for whether you need 1 or more depends on the service and what your account at that VPN provider offers.  Some paid accounts are 1 device, some might be 5 devices, and then they may have some premium account for 20 devices.  It just depends.

Hope this helps!

[John Driessen]

Hi J_S,

Thanks for replying. I think that indeed the answer lies in your reply.
I meant to state to create a server in OPNSense which 'points to'  an external provider.
(So in fact I use an external VPN-service then.)
I was wondering if this server was the only license I need or that all my clients needed a license too.
With this in mind to me now is clear that indeed all clients need a license since they will be connected to the external VPN service.
The server definition in OPNSense is just for creating a connection to the VPN-service of the external VPN provider.

[cookiemonster]

Probably some standard terminology confuses. OPN UI shows server because it can act as a VPN server, where clients can connect to. No licences are required because it  uses open source code to implement it.
In your case you would pay a commercial provider, and they act as the server. Depending on their licensing terms you might get one or more devices that can connect. Let's say two, then your pc and your laptop.

There is one more consideration though, when one of those clients can be your router, i.e.OPN, then all your LAN devices can make use of the VPN tunnel.

[zz00mm]

My answer to your question: The number of sessions is what you are getting with the different providers. I have 2 - 1 session VPN accounts, configured as followed:

VLAN104     openVPNEU connecting to NL endpoint, LAN & WIFI traffic show they are exiting/coming from somewhere in the netherlands.

VLAN105     openVPNUS connecting to US endpoint, LAN & WIFI traffic show they are exiting/coming from somewhere in the US.

To add additional headache to the mix, I have a cron job that resync/reconnects the VPN sessions at 4am every morning, The VPN connection configuration have multiple targets(s) selected at random. So everyday on the US connection, the traffic shows coming from a different city. Same for the NL connection.

I could do the above with 1 - 5 session account, which would only consume 2 of the 5, leaving the other sessions to be used on portable/mobile devices as needed.

Right now free VPN service is being used to test/setup. Planning on moving to a non free VPN service soon.