VPN / Calendar for The Society

VPN / Calendar

The Tiny VPN Island (TVI) is provided for the members and guests of The Society.

When The Society acts as an association, then we will need some means for internal communication.

While there are a lot of free and fancy communication tools "out there", nevertheless we will have an increased need for privacy in our society.

On the one hand, our web site is based on quite elaborate tools like Apache and PHP, so the risk of security leaks is low, even when the web site is reachable via our public address lc-soc-lc.or.at.

On the other hand, we will use quite recent tools for our internal communication, like Web3D Multiuser scenes, so the easiest way to achieve an acceptable level of security, is to employ a VPN.

Figure 1

The VPN is not connected to the Internet (the network traffic is not forwarded/NATed to/from the Internet).

The vServer has a virtual network interface on the address 172.27.224.1, which is a private network address according to RFC 1918, and the vServer will NOT act as IP router. It is a multihomed host.

The Tiny VPN Island is intended to connect up to 10 computers worldwide (concurrently) with a private LAN segment.

It is intended for use with multicast addresses from the local scope range 239.255.0.0 / 16 (a route is preconfigured for these).

Services of the Tiny VPN Island

The Service TVI: is the basic service of the TVI - a VPN - it is provided by the OpenVPN software.

The Service TVI-TS: is the first actual use case of the TVI - a voice group chat service - it is provided by the TeamSpeak3 software at the address 172.27.224.1.

The Service TVI-DIS: is the second actual use case of the TVI - a distribution service for DIS PDUs - using mcast addresses 239.255.x.x (IPv4 local scope multicast addresses).

Installation and Usage of the Tiny VPN Island

The TVI can be installed by our SOMA. If you need a SOMA account, please see below for more information about possible support.

Also, if you want to use the TVI - please check the VPN Calendar (see below) to avoid side effects with other people.

Installation and Usage of the VPN Calendar

The VPN Calendar is stored and published as personal calendar of following user

The URL for read-only access is...

https://lc-soc-lc.at/owncloud/index.php/apps/calendar/p/HLKQ0F8LP581DKBS/Persnlich

Follows an embedded frame with the VPN Calendar (read-only)

The VPN Calendar can be installed at your Smartphone...

..., if you have a SOMA account on our cloud, as examplified for Android

  1. Install DAVx5 (available at F-Droid)
  2. Create DAVx5 Account:
    • Account Name: <your-nickname>@lc-soc-lc.at
    • URL = https://lc-soc-lc.at/owncloud/remote.php/dav/calendars/<your-nickname>/personal/
    • user = <your-nickname>
    • pw = <your-password>
  3. Trigger Synchronization of <your-nickname>@lc-soc-lc.at at DAVx5
  4. at calendar application: activate "Personal (vpncal)" calendar of <your-nickname>@lc-soc-lc.at

If you need a SOMA account, please see below for more information about possible support.

Support

The TVI is restricted to use by the members and guests of The Society.

If you feel entitled as "member or guest of the society", or in case of any trouble with the VPN, please feel free to contact christoph[dot]valentin[at]gmx[dot]at.