Looking towards configuring StrongSwan as an IPSec VPN endpoint for Android. The long-term goal is to set up a VPN configuration in which the phone automatically forwards all traffic through the IPSec VPN tunnel to be routed via my home connection unless 1.) the phone is connected to my private wireless network (perhaps one dedicated to the phone) or 2.) I manually disable forwarding, possibly to be resumed automatically after a timeout, and definitely to be resumed at phone reboot. On the private network, will be doing some HTTP filtering, mangling, redirecting, and blocking; some file sync’ing and/or “private cloud” streaming; some monitoring; some outright blocking; some home automation… all kinds of wonderful, fun and exciting things. I’m coming up on a year since I left the giant red atrocity that is Verizon and purchased an Android phone and plan from US Cellular (which has been an outstanding upgrade in every way… both the phone and the carrier), and I’m just now getting things in place to begin configuring the VPN hub, hence “long term”. This post is primarily to note a few pages with hints, tips, and configurations for Android (and iPhone) device connections to a (Open|Strong)Swan server. The biggest problem I seem to be encountering thus far is that I don’t think any I have yet encountered are descriptive in setting up an “always on, automatic at boot” connection, and I’m thinking I’ll need to get a working tun.ko module for my phone to really make this happen as I would like. We shall see.
More to follow/update to post later.
