VPN through Public Wifi

Question

Here's the scenario:

• I am at a public cafe which offers free WIFI
• I enabled VPN and I can connect / visit our company's wiki

My question is if I surf the Internet or check my gmail, would the traffic go through the VPN tunnel?

If yes, how do you prove it? If no, how can you safely surf the Internet / check your gmail through a public WIFI?

Answer 1

Read the routing table of your OS (while connected) and check whether the "default gateway" or "default route" belongs to the cafe or to your company's network.

Windows:

route print
netsh interface ip show route
netsh interf ipv6 show route

Linux:

ip route
ip -6 route
route

BSDs:

route

All of the above:

netstat -r