SoftEther VPN Server: An Open-source Cross-platform Multi-protocol VPN Server

Abstract

SoftEther VPN Server is an open-source cross-platform multi-protocol VPN server which has two advantages over existing VPN servers. First, it supports multiple VPN protocols in a single VPN server instance. This makes it easy for an administrator to configure and manage a VPN server which supports remote access and site-to-site connection from a variety of VPN client devices. To realize that, SoftEther VPN Server includes a module called an L2 adapter to exchange messages between layer-3 VPN protocols and layer-2 VPN protocols seamlessly via common virtual L2 switches. The second advantage is that it can virtualize user management and networking, which is an essential function in multi-tenant virtual hosting. SoftEther VPN Server is portable among several operating systems. SoftEther VPN Server gained a total of 242,000 installations around the world from March 2013 to September 2014. The experimental result indicates that SoftEther VPN Server is faster than combinations of native VPN servers when exchanging messages between different VPN protocols.