Checking broadcast and non-IP traffic

The main reason for a bridged setup is to create a single broadcast domain for all the clients connected, both via the VPN and via a regular network connection.

Another reason is the ability to route or forward non-IP based traffic, such as the older Novell IPX and Appletalk protocols.

This recipe focuses on the use of tools such as tcpdump and wireshark to detect whether the broadcast domain is functioning and if non-IP traffic is flowing in the correct manner.

Getting ready

For this recipe, we use the setup from the Bridging - Linux recipe of this chapter. We use the following network layout:

For this recipe, the server computer was running CentOS 6 Linux and OpenVPN 2.3.9. For the server, keep the server configuration file example3-3-server.conf from the Bridging - Linux recipe ready. The first client computer was running Windows 7 64 bit and OpenVPN 2.3.10 and was in the same LAN segment as the OpenVPN server. The second client was running Windows XP...