OpenVpn and SSH tunneling

Question

first of all I'm a linux newbie and just rent my vps few days ago. I'm using this vps for ssh tunneling and web server (apache, php, etc).

Today I want to install openvpn but I'm bit confused that if I installed the openvpn can I still use ssh for tunneling?

Sometimes I may want to switch between them.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

OpenVPN and ssh use different ports to interact with clients, and use different methods for tunnelling traffic.

OpenVPN works at an IP level, and uses routing to direct specific network traffic into the tunnel. This can include all traffic.

ssh tunnelling works at a TCP port level. A port is opened on the client, and any traffic send to the local port gets tunnelled across the ssh session to the remote server.

In most cases, these two forms of tunnelling can coexist, without interfering with each other.