Subnet extrusion

Often IPsec is deployed in a hub-and-spoke architecture. Each leaf node has an IP range that is part of a larger range. Leaves communicate with each other via the hub. This is called subnet extrusion. In the example below we configure the head office with 10.0.0.0/8 and two branches that use a smaller /24 subnet.

At the head office:

conn branch1
    left=1.2.3.4
    leftid=@headoffice
    leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0
    leftrsasigkey=0sA[...]
    #
    right=5.6.7.8
    rightid=@branch1
    righsubnet=10.0.1.0/24
    rightrsasigkey=0sAXXXX[...]
    #
    auto=start
    authby=rsasigkey

conn branch2
    left=1.2.3.4
    leftid=@headoffice
    leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0
    leftrsasigkey=0sA[...]
    #
    right=10.11.12.13
    rightid=@branch2
    righsubnet=10.0.2.0/24
    rightrsasigkey=0sAYYYY[...]
    #
    auto=start
    authby=rsasigkey

At the “branch1” office we use the same branch1 connection as above, but additionally we use a pass-through connection to exclude our local LAN traffic from being sent through the tunnel:

conn branch1
    left=1.2.3.4
    leftid=@headoffice
    leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0
    leftrsasigkey=0sA[...]
    #
    right=10.11.12.13
    rightid=@branch2
    righsubnet=10.0.1.0/24
    rightrsasigkey=0sAYYYY[...]
    #
    auto=start
    authby=rsasigkey

conn passthrough
    left=127.0.0.1
    right=0.0.0.0
    leftsubnet=10.0.1.0/24
    rightsubnet=10.0.1.0/24
    authby=never
    type=passthrough
    auto=route