PPTP Guide

Why use a VPN?

A VPN encrypts the traffic going across the network. The prevents prying eyes from seeing your details. Another great feature is that your external IP will appear to be in the country of the VPN. For example, if you live in Paris and have a VPN back to San Diego, CA, you're IP will be a stateside IP. This allows you to watch content that is normally blocked outside the United States, like Netflix.

How to Setup a PPTP VPN connection

Prerequisites

• A PPTP VPN account - I suggest StrongVPN[1] for the WDTV because that is how b-rad made the PPTP app.
• pptp.app.bin[2]
• Thumbdrive

Installation/Setup

1. Copy the pptp.app.bin to your USB drive and reboot. When the WDTV comes back up log into the WebEnd and click on WDLXTV Config. Open the Apps tab and you should seed the pptp configuration section.
2. Open a new window and go to StrongVPN's FAQ[3]. Scroll halfway down until you find their DNS addresses. Copy the first one and put it in the PPTP VPN DNS field of the pptp config.
3. Navigate to your StrongVPN account settings. To find this, log in to StrongVPN and click on VPN Accounts Summary and then click on View Greeting.
4. In the pptp settings enter the password in the PPTP VPN Password field, username in the PPTP VPN Username field, and Server IP (not Server Address) in the PPTP VPN DNS field.
5. Click Save.

Using the VPN

When you want to enable or disable the VPN open the WebEnd and click on the pptp button in Plugin Daemons.

Things to note

When you are using the PPTP VPN, by default all traffic is routed through the VPN. Yes, you can watch Netflix, but your bittorrent traffic will also go through the VPN.

The data going across a PPTP VPN is encrypted when setup correctly, the initial handshake with the username/password is sent in plain text. If somebody is able to sniff this then they can easily get your information.

I had a problem with the WDLXTV Live+ 1.05.04 0.5.1.1. I kept getting the following error when trying to start the VPN:

Starting pptp

config saved val:key => (PLUGIN_WEBDIRS,webirc|/apps/webirc/cgiirc,mt-daapd|/usr/share/mt-daapd,umsp|/usr/share/umsp,nzbgetweb|/usr/share/nzbgetweb,rtorrent|/usr/share/rutorrent)
config saved val:key => (PLUGIN_WEBDIRS,webirc|/apps/webirc/cgiirc,mt-daapd|/usr/share/mt-daapd,umsp|/usr/share/umsp,nzbgetweb|/usr/share/nzbgetweb,rtorrent|/usr/share/rutorrent,pptp|/apps/pptp/usr/share/pptp)
/apps/pptp/bin/pppd: error while loading shared libraries: libpcap.so.0.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Done

This seems to only be a problem with the WDLXTV Live+ of this firmware, the WDLXTV Live works fine.

Verifying the VPN is working.

Before turning on the VPN, run the following command in a command shell:

   wget -O - http://automation.whatismyip.com/n09230945.asp 2>/dev/null

Enable the VPN and run the command again. Double check that the IP isn't the same as your external IP from a computer that is not using the VPN.

How to Setup an OpenVPN connection

Prerequisites

• An OpenVPN account - I suggest StrongVPN[4]
• The newest version of OpenVPN[5]
• Thumbdrive

Installation/Setup

1. Rename the downloaded bin to openvpn.app.bin
2. Copy the bin to the thumbdrive
3. Reboot the WDTV
4. Make a backup of the original config file by using # mv /apps/openvpn/etc/openvpn.conf /apps/openvpn/etc/openvpn.conf.bak
5. Copy your certs and any configuration files to /apps/openvpn/etc/. For StrongVPN I had to rename my ovpn file to openvpn.conf.