Differences between SSH's tunnels and OpenVPN

SSH VPN tunnels still use the ssh connection, no? Last I checked it did. And since ssh runs over TCP that means that the VPN runs over TCP.

This is not a good way to do it. A single dropped packet will cause i hickup of ALL communication that's going through the tunnel.

Tunneling IP over TCP is a bad idea.

OpenVPN can use TCP or UDP. UDP is preferred for the reason I explained (poorly).

Better explanation: http://sites.inka.de/~W1011/devel/tcp-tcp.html

That being said, SSH VPN is probably easier to set up.

If your server already has SSH access configured, then obviously using SSH tunnels will work without having to touch the firewall.

OTOH, if your users need access to your server from anywhere in the world, you are probably better off using OpenVPN, as this can be configured to run over port 443 (HTTPS). The reason for this is that in many hotels and other WiFI hotspots traffic through ports other than 80 and 443 is very often disabled and this effectively means your SSH VPN tunnels don't work, whereas OpenVPN can be made to work.

I am sure there are other good differentiators, but this is our reason to use OpenVPN.