httptunneling into a firewalled environment?

My daughter is about to take her Linux system into a firewalled
environment. I can't expect that the admins will be willing or able
to forward ssh or webmin to it. Can I set up something on it (and, if
necessary, on my system) that will give me a shell on her system when I
need to do some system administration on it? I thought maybe httptunnel
would do the trick but this seems to be used to connect from inside a
firewall out, and I want to go from the outside in.

I'm not a networking expert so please be detailed and explicit in your
instructions but I do know how to set up mechanisms to get her LAN IP
address and firewall IP address dynamically.

Bob T.

Bob Tennent wrote:
> My daughter is about to take her Linux system into a firewalled
> environment. I can't expect that the admins will be willing or able
> to forward ssh or webmin to it. Can I set up something on it (and, if
> necessary, on my system) that will give me a shell on her system when I
> need to do some system administration on it? I thought maybe httptunnel
> would do the trick but this seems to be used to connect from inside a
> firewall out, and I want to go from the outside in.
>
> I'm not a networking expert so please be detailed and explicit in your
> instructions but I do know how to set up mechanisms to get her LAN IP
> address and firewall IP address dynamically.
>
> Bob T.


Hi,

If everything is blocked from the outside in by the admin (witch is 99%
sure the case), for sure you wont be able to access services such as SSH
or HTTP.

The solution I can see is the following:

You could configure a VPN server on your computer at home. If you are
using a router, forward the proper VPN ports to this comp.

Then your daughter could connect to your VPN server (usually this is
allowed trough campus firewalls IN->OUT). Once your daughter is
connected to your VPN server, its just has if she were on your local LAN.

For example if your local lan is 192.168.1.X, well she will get a VPN IP
from your private network dhcp server (eg:192.168.1.105). Then all you
gotta do is SSH to this IP.

Of course all this has to be initiated from the inside out by your
daughter. So for ON DEMAND support, this is a good option.

Good luck !

SiO

Bob Tennent wrote:
> My daughter is about to take her Linux system into a firewalled
> environment. I can't expect that the admins will be willing or able
> to forward ssh or webmin to it. Can I set up something on it (and, if
> necessary, on my system) that will give me a shell on her system when I
> need to do some system administration on it? I thought maybe httptunnel
> would do the trick but this seems to be used to connect from inside a
> firewall out, and I want to go from the outside in.
>
> I'm not a networking expert so please be detailed and explicit in your
> instructions but I do know how to set up mechanisms to get her LAN IP
> address and firewall IP address dynamically.
>
> Bob T.

Hi,

If everything is blocked from the outside in by the admin (witch is 99%
sure the case), for sure you wont be able to access services such as SSH
or HTTP.

The solution I can see is the following:

You could configure a VPN server on your computer at home. If you are
using a router, forward the proper VPN ports to this comp.

Then your daughter could connect to your VPN server (usually this is
allowed trough campus firewalls IN->OUT). Once your daughter is
connected to your VPN server, its just has if she were on your local LAN.

For example if your local lan is 192.168.1.X, well she will get a VPN IP
from your private network dhcp server (eg:192.168.1.105). Then all you
gotta do is SSH to this IP.

Of course all this has to be initiated from the inside out by your
daughter. So for ON DEMAND support, this is a good option.

Good luck !

SiO