Samba over the Internet?

If Samba is so very convenient, you may wonder, why not use IPsec or some other VPN/encryption tool to secure its use on the Internet? This is actually possible. As it’s been a while since I covered IPsec in this space, and in the intervening years, IPsec support has been added to the Linux kernel, I just may end this series with a quick tutorial on doing Samba over IPsec.

However, Samba is a very “chatty” protocol—it generates a lot of packets even if you’re using it only for small files or shares. This causes problems not so much for your Internet link as for Samba performance:
Samba can be very sensitive to dropped or delayed packets, which is more likely in your modestly sized Internet uplink than over your exponentially bigger Local Area Network (LAN) fabric.

So, trying to get Samba working over IPsec may or may not be worth your time, and it may or may not warrant my covering it in this series of columns. Have no fear, one way or another, you can expect me to provide a tutorial on using the Linux kernel’s IPsec functionality in a future Paranoid Penguin column.