Forwarding all traffic over secure link? SSH, VPN, TUN/TAP?

[CheetahMk2]

I'm trying to figure out a way if I can securely forward all traffic from my laptop (on wireless) to my desktop and then out. Obviously, I don't trust the wireless part.

I could use something like SSH, but that would only tunnel *one* port to *one* predefined IP. I want to be able to use it like a regular network adapter, with all traffic going over it - meaning I can connect once, then everything is secure. Windows L2TP/IPSEC vpn kinda works like this, but there is a second part.

On the other side, I want it to *appear* as if my laptop('s MAC) is on the same switch port/segment as my desktop. The program I am looking for would forward any frames headed to my laptop's MAC from upstream across the secure link to my laptop, who can reply over the secure link in turn. End result: upstream it looks like the laptop is plugged in next to the desktop.

Reason I can't use Windows' PPP VPN - it makes another 'fake' MAC on the network, so the switch upstream doesn't recognize it, and doesn't assign it a (correct) IP.

This needs to work on Windows XP too. I know this may be mind-bogglingly easy on *nix, but the toolsets just aren't there on Windows quite yet, and I'm stuck with that for the time being. Any advice would be helpful. Even if you know of a VPN endpoint software that supports L2TP/IPSEC and is freeware/FOSS, that might work too.

 

[MrChad]

I've seen this done with DESProxy and stunnel.

 

[Hikari]

You can also install cygwin (www.cygwin.com ?) and use the openssh server it comes with to tunnel traffic to.

Then on your remote machine, run ssh and use its -D option which lets it run an encrypted socks4 proxy server on your machine.

 

[CheetahMk2]

Thanks for the help, I did some more searching on that DESProxy, seems support is gone now. I was looking into something like OpenSwan, so I could run that in Cygwin or something (and assign IPs locally with DHCP), but I could find no mention of a port.

It seems there are very few VPN Server programs for windows, I had a hard time even googling that phrase. I can't afford to make a computer just for Linux, so if anyone can help...