Failover and load balancing solutions for remote access VPNs based on open standards

Abstract

Nowadays, there is wide range of VPN technologies available on the market, where some of them offer only basic security functions and some others bring strong security with appropriate complexity. Remote access VPNs are commonly used type of secure connection for home offices, company branches, etc. to company headquarter. Unfortunately, lack of failover and load balancing mechanisms in VPNs bring often end users into the situation, where VPN connection is not available due the connection error on the network path. Reason for this is very often failure on ISP network and not failure at the endpoints, which are VPN concentrator and VPN client's router. On the other side, there is demand to deploy secure and least complex solution with strong cryptography and easy management. OpenVPN technology fulfill these demands, because it offers relatively easy configuration, the most secure connection among VPN technologies, strong cryptography, availability of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) and possibility to make whole system ready for failover and load balancing. In this article, there are described complex failover and load balancing solutions based on standards and examples are presented on MikroTik routers with RouterOS operating system.