Notice 2025 – Math VPN as a Service of the ZIM

As a result of a certificate provider change, starting from 12/2025 a Math VPN service will be offered by ZIM.

Installation

If you do not yet have OpenVPN installed, download the installer from the official OpenVPN download page and run it. Follow the standard installation procedure. 

Configuration

The configs can be found in the ZIM Help Wiki in the respective VPN articles (https://hilfe.uni-paderborn.de/VPN_einrichten).

Please make sure that you have requested and installed a current certificate, required for the used operating system, via the ZIM service portal.

The VPN for employees of Mathematics is listed as “Institute for Mathematics – ID: 10”.

Usage

To use OpenVPN, open OpenVPN-GUI via the Start menu. In the system tray (next to the clock) a new symbol will appear. Open the context menu with a right-click on the symbol, select the entry “10_windows_udp_redirect” and choose connect. A new window with several status messages will open.

If everything worked, the symbol will change its color to green and the VPN connection is established. If needed, the connection can be disconnected again via the context menu.

Please then check the assigned IP addresses at https://imt-infoboard.uni-paderborn.de/ip/

There, the information should be marked in green and for IPv4 be in the range 131.234.50.160/27 and for IPv6 in the range 2001:638:502:5183::/64.

If an error occurs when establishing the VPN connection (yellow icon), this is probably due to an old certificate that still needs to be removed.

Please contact us in such cases.

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Note 2025 - Math VPN as a service provided by RBM (vpn2.math.uni-paderborn.de)

Installation

To do this, download the installer from the official OpenVPN download page and run it. Follow the standard installation procedure. 

Configuration

For this you have to download the Konfigurations-Zertifikats Kombination and unzip the ZIP archive. Open the “math2_2025” directory. You can now import the “math2_2025.ovpn” configuration by double-clicking on it. Please also copy the file “HARICA_CA_Chain.pem” to the directory “OpenVPN/config/math_2025”.

You will find the “OpenVPN” directory directly within your user directory.

You can delete old configurations that are no longer needed from the directory “OpenVPN/config/”.

Use

To use OpenVPN, open OpenVPN-GUI via the start menu. A new icon appears in the system tray (next to the clock). Open the context menu by right-clicking on the icon and select Connect. A new window will open with some status messages. You will then be asked for your VPN credentials. Enter your RBM username and your VPN password.

Important: This is not the normal password (e.g. for webmail) but a separate one. If you do not have VPN access data yet or if you have forgotten your password, please contact a member of the RBM.

If everything worked, the color of the icon changes to green and the VPN connection is established. If necessary, the connection can be disconnected again via the context menu with the option Disconnect.