VPN, Virtual Private Network, is currently used by a large number of employees working from home for secured connection to a remote corporate network. VPN SSTP, which is one of the many VPN types, we use and offer very often in our data center and we will show you how to set it up on the operating system Windows and the Linux distribution Ubuntu 20.04

There are several types of security protocols in using the VPN, which have many advantages but also disadvantages. We can mention the protocols PPTP, L2TP, IKEv2, however very widespread protocol, which we also provide in our data center as a service, is VPN SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol. Its great advantage is easy setting and bypassing firewalls.

The VPN SSTP was developed by Microsoft Corporation and designed primarily for secure connections through operating system Windows. Nevertheless, nowadays, it can be used also on open source distributions such as Ubuntu and Debian. And how to install SSTP on Debian 20.04, we will describe for you step by step below.

For successful connection via SSTP VPN, you will need the following information and files that should be provided to you by the VPN server administrator:

• VPN account (user name a password)
• VPN server certificate (file)
• VPN server name

1) Add repository (package repository with SSTP client)

Enter the terminal and use the following command (you will be asked for your password, if you use sudo command for the first time). By this command, you will add new repository with SSTP client to your current package repository list.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:eivnaes/network-manager-sstp

2) Update of packages list and installation of the SSTP client

If the previous command ran smoothly without any problem, you can proceed to the next step, which is the list update of all available packages, including the newly added ones:

$ sudo apt update

The information about all packages in the system is up-to-date now. You can proceed with your own installation of the SSTP client:

$ sudo apt install sstp-client

If a control or test of VPN from the command line was your goal, now, you can do it with the command:

$ sstpc

3) Optional – plugin installation of GUI GNOME

If you want to add and configure the SSTP VPN connection conveniently, directly from the GNOME GUI (default for Ubuntu 20.04), install the following package, which will make this option available to you in the GUI:

span>sudo apt install network-manager-sstp-gnome

This package should be installed automatically with the previous package (if the system correctly detects GNOME), so this step should not be needed at all.

4) Create VPN in the graphical interface

Click on the power icon in the upper right corner of your desktop (main system menu) and select Settings. In the open window, find and select Network item and then click the + sign in the VPN section.

A new window will be created with custom settings of SSTP VPN. This window has several tabs. Click on Identity tab and fill following data:

• Name of VPN connection (optional)
• VPN server name (VPN administrator should provided to you)
• Path to VPN server certificate (VPN administrator should provided to you)
• User name and password (VPN administrator should provided to you)

Please, all settings save and you can test it by using the on/off switch located next to your newly added VPN. If everything is alright, the VPN connection will be established within a few seconds. The system will inform you about the result in the form of a new icon on the system panel and a message on the screen.

And that is all.

We hope, you have secured connection now and that our tutorial was helpful. In the next part, we will show you how to set up VPN SSTP on devices with operating system Windows.

Have many secured connections with SSTP VPN and if you are interested in using this type of VPN
on your server in our data center, do not hesitate to contact us.

Coolhousing team