VPN Software

[Ditchmiester]

Hey everyone, i'm trying to set up a VPN to my servers at work and am stuck on how to go about doing it. Any one have any good tutorials of advice on software (if needed) that I should look into. We are running all windows based machines. Anything from xp to windows 8. We have a static IP set up through our ATT internet account if that is going to make a difference.

 

[choucove]

The VPNs that I have set up have all been site-to-site using Sonicwall TZ series firewalls. This method is great, we use it to connect both offices of the sign company in two cities together so files can be accessed easier, and management of computer systems is much quicker. The actual setup of the VPN using the Sonicwalls was quite easy it seems, but I don't know about remote-to-site VPN. I think what you're probably looking for is more for people to use like on their laptops while out of the office to connect back to your servers. This would probably need some kind of VPN client like Hamachi to connect back to your router, but I'm not sure if you have to have a VPN service running on a server at your location that the VPN tunnel terminates at, or if you have to have some physical firewall or VPN router that builds the remote-to-guest tunnel and the Hamachi client on your remote computer just connects to that.

 

[Stefan]

You could try out TeamViewer, both remote control and VPN:

http://www.teamviewer.com

 

[Ditchmiester]

Thanks for the info. I've looked at the hamachi software but it is a little confusing on how it works. We've got an employee who works from home and they would like to be able to access our server and run our server based accounting program. I also do some design work at home and would find it much easier to save my files directly on the server so I know I'm always working on the correct revision.

 

[Doc Savage]

Have you considered dropbox? I use this for my own files. I can work on a file from any of my computers and when I save it it is automattically updated on every computer I have the Dropbox software installed on. Even better is if I find that a month from now I need a file I altered yesterday I can go to their website and restore an older version of the file and work on that.

 

[Mike F]

This article might be able to help you out: http://lifehacker.com/5900969/build-your-own-vpn-to-pimp-out-your-gaming-streaming-remote-access-and-oh-yeah-security

 

[particleman]

Hamachi works ok but I prefer a router that acts as a VPN endpoint. With hamachi you will need the client on the machines you want to connect to. This is ok with a few machines, but if you have other devices on your network it becomes difficult to manage.

There are many mid range VPN routers out now that support various types of vpn. Cisco and Sonicwall are the nicest ones. However I've used this one with success http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124160

I've also used this one the SSL VPN is really nice and easy to use. You log into the admin externally (supports two factor authentication also) and a java applet creates the vpn tunnel, no configuration required.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833181137

 

[Ditchmiester]

Thanks everyone for the info I'm going to try himachi first and see if that works. I think it will work and what i'm trying to do doesn't seem like it should be that hard but the previous VPN we had set up through our previous internet provided was so slow that outside of the office you couldn't do anything at all. I'm hoping it will be better now that I can be the one to set it up. Thanks again and if anyone else has any ideas on how I should approach this I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[particleman]

With VPN your upload bandwidth is incredibly important. Say you have a 10mb down/1mb up connection. When you connect over VPN the fastest possible download you could get from that connection would be 1mb. Remote desktop, intranet web apps work ok over that, but large file transfers will be much slower than your normal download speed.