How to connect your iOS device to the VPN IPsec (OpenVPN) Server

[Ka Hooli]

I've been trying to get this working for months, but the break through was the fact that yesterday I found that OpenVPN have released about 2 weeks ago their own free iOS VPN application, OpenVPN Connect, that ties into the VPN API within iOS 5.0 and above.

After some research, I was able to get it working using a single file (importing the text from the other files within the client bundle into the .ovpn file).  While this isn't the most secure method (if anyone else got hold of it, they could connect to my VPN, and the certificates aren't held within iOS secure keychain), it is the easiest for deployment.  Once the iOS app is installed, the user just needs to open the email with the .ovpn file attached, click on it and import it into the OpenVPN application.

There are a few things to note, dev tap and tls-remote functions don't work with the iOS app for various reasons, so you will need to comment them out of the .opvn text file.  Also you have to use TUN style tunneling instead of TAP due to the iOS VPN API.

Hopefully this is enough information to help people to work out how to set it up, but I've also added a lot more details on a blog article I've published here. 

[moazrefat]

thanks for your post , but actually i need your help in how to connect to vpn through IOS iphone using single file like you said as i can't understand and get it well,
so can you in brief explain how to do this task , please as it is very important for me.

thank you for you post, and you support is highly appreciated.

[Ka Hooli]

thanks for your post , but actually i need your help in how to connect to vpn through IOS iphone using single file like you said as i can't understand and get it well, so can you in brief explain how to do this task , please as it is very important for me.

thank you for you post, and you support is highly appreciated.

I spent quite a bit of time already documenting how I did this on my blog.  The last sentence of my post above links directly to the article.

Because of the amount of time I spent on the article, I thought a brief description here and a link to it would be sufficient.

If there isn't enough details in the article, let me know.

[madelinemadan]

Public Wi-Fi hotspots serve as breeding grounds for professional and amateur hackers. Therefore, your security can be easily compromised by a hacker who is using the same public WiFi hotspot as you. iPhone VPN app secures your iPhone communications through a private encryption ‘tunnel’ – to keep hackers from stealing your data. Moreover, if you travel and need web access from different locations, you may find some websites blocked. Now, you can use servers located in multiple countries (e.g. UK, USA, etc.) to access more geo-restricted web content with the help of an iPhone VPN App on your iPhone.

[bbking]

I've been trying to get this working for months, but the break through was the fact that yesterday I found that OpenVPN have released about 2 weeks ago their own free iOS VPN application, OpenVPN Connect, that ties into the VPN API within iOS 5.0 and above.

After some research, I was able to get it working using a single file (importing the text from the other files within the client bundle into the .ovpn file).  While this isn't the most secure method (if anyone else got hold of it, they could connect to my VPN, and the certificates aren't held within iOS secure keychain), it is the easiest for deployment.  Once the iOS app is installed, the user just needs to open the email with the .ovpn file attached, click on it and import it into the OpenVPN application.

There are a few things to note, dev tap and tls-remote functions don't work with the iOS app for various reasons, so you will need to comment them out of the .opvn text file.  Also you have to use TUN style tunneling instead of TAP due to the iOS VPN API.

Hopefully this is enough information to help people to work out how to set it up, but I've also added a lot more details on a blog article I've published here. 

Hi there,

thanks for the howto - I just tried it myself, but the openVPN app on iPhone fails with the error
TUN Error: ton_prop_error: ifconfig addresses are not in the same subnet /30 subnet (topology net30)

the original ovpn file works without problems on Windows. Is this an error or the lack of support for some feature under iOS?

Thanks a lot in advance

[malhothra]

I got same error as bb king when I tried to install open VPN app on my latest iPhone 6s. Any one please help with this.
Thanks in advance