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I am hosting a VPN server on my windows computer. However when I try to connect to it, I cannot figure out what the "Shared Secret Key" that it wants is and where I can find it. I have tried searching for this in countless places. Please tell me where I can find it and where I can create it. Thanks!

Windows version: Windows 8.1 Pro (going to update to Windows 10 Pro soon)

Here are all I get to see in the "Properties":

Properties - General

Properties - Networking

I am connection to the VPN on my Mac (OS X El Capitan 10.11.3 Beta) The wireless router I am using is the Apple Airport Extreme. I also port forwarded the necessary ports for an outgoing VPN connection.

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  • For future reference, the VPN type is required to answer the question - for example, OpenVPN used tls-auth PSK's (now tls-crypt), generated via openvpn --genkey --secret ta.key
    – JW0914
    Mar 29 at 12:12

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For some types of (IPsec) VPN, the Preshared Secret (PSK) is an arbitrary alphanumeric string or "passphrase" which is used to encrypt the traffic across the VPN.

If you have set up a VPN server you should be able to administer it and, specifically, to create a VPN connection. One of the necessary parameters is the PSK. I am not aware that there is a VPN server included in any Windows version but either I've misunderstood you or I'll learn something new today.

You can use any combination of letters, numbers and special characters up to a string length of at least 16 (the maximum length of the PSK is implementation dependent). This PSK, along with other connection parameters, has to be submitted to the VPN client (hence: pre-shared) for him to be able to establish a connection.

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