How to set up a VPN ?

shabbyroad

(sorry - tried to search but VPN has too few letters for the boards search)

I understand the general concept of a VPN : I want to access a single PC on my home lan (behind router/firewall) from another PC via the internet, preferably would like to use Windows remote desktop to do this.

Can someone point me toward a guide that will explain step-by-step how to do this ?

iano

The key is your "router/firewall".

Does it support VPN? If so, check the manual and FAQ on the manufacturers support site.
Most companies will provide a step-by-step guide.

For example, Draytek provides these step-by-step guides for their ADSL VPN Routers.

Once you have the VPN in place, you can configure Remote Desktop (follow the Microsoft instructions) or VNC or PCAnywhere or whatever.

shabbyroad

thanks - looks like all the information I need is there. will try setting it up tonight and connecting from the office tomorrow.

my only concern is that I won't be able to connect to my home PC from behind my office firewall though what I'm reading seems to indicate that I shouldn't have any problem with outbound data from my office pc and so long as I set up my home pc and VPN properly it should be ok.

Gavin

Depends. If your office is running NAT, then depending on the VPN software being used, this may cause trouble. The Nat machine changes the packets, which the vpn could pick up on and reject as being invalid.

But, if the VPN only secures the payload, and doesn't secure the entire packet, there shouldn't be a problem. I believe.

Gav

zenith

www.gotomypc.com

VPN for idjits. Works real good fer me.

bricks

You could just forward the TSE TCP port 3389.
The router on your home network needs to be configured to allow this, should be instructions in your router manual.
Then you can connect in from the office.
Not as secure as VPN but will be easy to setup.

GuanYin

use VNC/SSh

thast what I did

go here

shabbyroad

thanks everyone for the answers.

so far what I've managed to do is make my router accessible using dyndns which isn't quite what I need to do I can control the router from anywhere online... but that's not what I'm trying to do.
(This router supports Dynamic DNS and supports dyndns.org whichich is pretty good... I think ! If I could figure out how that's going to help me !)

the manual for my router (Zyxel Prestige 650HW) doesn't go into much (any) detail on setting up VPN. It's available on the router but rather cryptic (loads of settings I just don't understand)

Some specific questions : should I give the PC I want to control a static IP ? The DHCP server on my router assigns it the same IP anyway seeing as it's always on so I'm not sure there's any real advantage

My preference is to use Windows Remote Desktop. As far as I can tell I need to forward a port or ports (not sure of the number(s)) to the IP of the PC that I want to connect to via the internet from my office.

bricks

Originally posted by shabbyroad
thanks everyone for the answers.

My preference is to use Windows Remote Desktop. As far as I can tell I need to forward a port or ports (not sure of the number(s)) to the IP of the PC that I want to connect to via the internet from my office.

Forward TCP port 3389 and your PC will need a static IP address.
Otherwise you'd need to change the port forward everytime your PC's address changed.