VPN Question

[Sabolin]

I am noob to VPN's..

I have a server running SBS2003 at my office. I want to create a VPN so my computer from home can connect to my network at the office and I want to share a drive on my home computer so that all the computers at the office can see this hard drive. I have business-class cable at the office and residential cable at my house, both with static IP's.

I've googled a little bit but came across a lot of stuff that I didn't really understand and don't have time to research all of it. From what I did read, my understanding is that this shouldn't be too hard to set up and is quite common. Has anyone done this and can provide details or know of a step by step guide on what to do?

Thanks in advance.

[Lenas]

If your drive is shared I would assume it'd just be a matter of setting up a VPN through windows - which is easy in the network connections area. When I connect to work all I do is enter a name, put in the IP address, and enter my login information. When I connect, the drive shows up as a folder on my desktop.

I assume, since you mentioned a static IP, that you would just enter that and your login information and it should show you shared drives?

[Hachima]

https://secure.logmein.com/products/pro/ or even the free version would work if its just you accessing the server for a client to remote with. It is VERY easy to setup and it works great.

I wouldn't really recommend putting a file share up over the internet. Maybe setting up an FTP server would be better. There are also external hard drives with networking capabilities built in. It just depends on what your needs are for this to be shared I guess.

How can I install the FTP service under Windows XP?

[Cynno]

Just use Logmein.com

Fuck VPN setup and use.

[egoslicer]

Again recommending LogMeIn. We even use it for hospital clients now.

[Sabolin]

I use logmein free to access my work computers from home. I need access to the filesystem on my home computer from work though with the ability to use automatic scripts to copy files to it.. can logmein free do that?

Setting up an ftp server sounds like a possible solution. I've used filezilla server before, might be the way I go with this.

Thanks all.

[Cynno]

If you really need file transfers, logmein free isn't the best idea.

BUT DAH DAH

ULTRA VNC

This program is pretty bad ass too.

[Kindnugs]

You need to setup Remote Access Server to allow outside computers to connect to your network. RAS will create a "tunnel" that will encrypt all data during the connection. Also you will need to setup your firewall to allow the designated port for RAS to accept connections.Also allowing your Active Directory users access to this tunnel, or regular local users if AD is not being used.

RAS comes with 2003 and pretty much any server product 2000 and up. Its pretty easy to use and setup. You may need to add it if it was not included in your 2003 install. Use add/remove programs and select to install windows components and select RAS. A quick overview install can be seen at: How To Allow Remote Users to Access Your Network in Windows 2000

[Cynno]

I just found this cool deal.

Logmein Hamachi

check it out, seems to be pretty cool.

[prescient63]

Maybe someone could tell me how to do this over a vpn specifically hamachi. I have a postgres database running on my home computer and I want to be able to access it from my laptop. Accessing it on my home computer requires me to enter an ip address and port number like 127.0.0.1:5432. Obviously this is an internal IP address and port number so how would I connect to that database over the VPN? When i tried entering the VPN ip address and port number it didn't work. Any suggestions out there or may i need to check some setting on postgres?

[prescient63]

Figured it out!

[Cynno]

Details man.

What did you use and how easy was the setup?

[prescient63]

Well I have to give big props to hamachi. It is stupidly easy to use as far as VPNs go. Just install and its ready to go. All you have to do is create a network and add your computers to it. The real advantage to this is that you get a static IP address so once you configure your stuff you're ready to go. My problem was that Postgres only accepts connections from the local host and you have to go into the config files and allow it to accept connections from external IP addresses. Which is the nice thing about having the VPN as I can specify one IP address and not worry about having to set it up again even though I'm accessing from different IP addresses all over the place.

Edit: I should mention that it is sending data slow as shit over my 3g air card to the db, but on my home network it was very quick (hamachi is useful for the nat transversal stuff alone). I'm not really sure why it is so slow because even with the low upload speed the inputs to the database should be relatively small as I'm fairly certain all the data is being computed server side and my home box is pretty fast (quad core w/ 4 gigs of ram). Maybe I didn't understand what the author of the program said and it's being computed on my laptop and the various inputs are being sent to the server. Either way it doesn't really matter as it is fast enough to be useful.

Edit 2: After checking my bandwidth usage I'm definitely sending a good chunk of data upstream. Way more than I thought I would be.

Edit 3: Looks like this isn't going to work as I'm losing data somewhere along the line. I don't really think that it is the fault of hamachi, but rather the application that sends data to the postgresql box isn't meant for the slow transfer speeds and just screws up somewhere along the line. I guess I'll have to go back to merging them every week or so, and work off of a local DB. Still it is a great little vpn program and I doubt it is the fault of himachi.

[Kindnugs]

Why don't you just set up Remote Access Server?