Remote access to network share - VPN?

Hi there,

I work as a PC doctor to home office & small business & one of my
customers wants to be able to access a Windows XP network share when
away from his office. I reckon I'm generally pretty clueful but
unfortunately in my customer-base there's not very much demand for this
sort of thing, so I don't have any experience of it.

The files that the bloke wants to access are the data files for a
contacts management program called "Maximiser" and he currently has
these shared over the LAN so that both he & another user can both share
the same database on the office's two PCs.

I guess the directory of data will need to be addressable as
\\ip.address\sharename &/or mounted as a network drive, so I don't know
if this rules out web-dav solutions but it probably does rule out these
little Linksys NAS boxes that I've used elsewhere
<http://tinyurl.com/b22gt>.

I'm guessing that the best way to go is a VPN so that the network share
is just transparently available wherever the user is. I get the
impression that it's desirable for the users to be able to connect to
the office's network share not just from home but also from alternative
locations, such as wireless hotspots or customers' premises.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to achieve this, please? If
I needed this kind of access for myself I'd probably find something
suitable to install on my Linux server but I think the ideal thing for
this customer would be either to upgrade the machine with the shared
files to Windows Professional or (better) just to upgrade his router to
one that will take care of everything for this VPN.

Any advices much appreciated.

Stroller.

Stroller wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I work as a PC doctor to home office & small business & one of my
> customers wants to be able to access a Windows XP network share when
> away from his office. I reckon I'm generally pretty clueful but
> unfortunately in my customer-base there's not very much demand for this
> sort of thing, so I don't have any experience of it.
>
> The files that the bloke wants to access are the data files for a
> contacts management program called "Maximiser" and he currently has
> these shared over the LAN so that both he & another user can both share
> the same database on the office's two PCs.
>
> I guess the directory of data will need to be addressable as
> \\ip.address\sharename &/or mounted as a network drive, so I don't know
> if this rules out web-dav solutions but it probably does rule out these
> little Linksys NAS boxes that I've used elsewhere
> <http://tinyurl.com/b22gt>.
>
> I'm guessing that the best way to go is a VPN so that the network share
> is just transparently available wherever the user is. I get the
> impression that it's desirable for the users to be able to connect to
> the office's network share not just from home but also from alternative
> locations, such as wireless hotspots or customers' premises.
>
> Does anyone have any recommendations on how to achieve this, please? If
> I needed this kind of access for myself I'd probably find something
> suitable to install on my Linux server but I think the ideal thing for
> this customer would be either to upgrade the machine with the shared
> files to Windows Professional or (better) just to upgrade his router to
> one that will take care of everything for this VPN.
>

I would recommend a Draytek 2600+ router as the end point of the VPN.
You can setup the mobile PC with a VPN connection or download a tool
from Draytek which will do it for you - however depending on the file
sizes and how the programme works it might be unuseably slow. Consider
using something like www.gotomypc.com or www.logmein.com to give him
remote access to his desktop. I have a user running gotomypc to run
Sage accounting on her office PC from home and it is very acceptable.

JP

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...


> I work as a PC doctor

oh fuck do I hate that 'term'.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, (E-Mail Removed)
says...

> Consider using something like www.gotomypc.com...

How much does that cost, for the individual package, as it seems I have
to divulge my 'personal' details just to see a price?

On 2005-11-26 01:58:28 +0000, Boss Hog
<(E-Mail Removed)> said:
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> (E-Mail Removed) says...
>
>> I work as a PC doctor
>
> oh fuck do I hate that 'term'.

So do I, but not as much as "IT Consultant".

Stroller.

Boss Hog wrote:
>
> How much does that cost, for the individual package, as it seems I have
> to divulge my 'personal' details just to see a price?

And what benefit does it give over TS/RDP or secure VNC?

Boss Hog wrote:
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, (E-Mail Removed)
> says...
>
>> Consider using something like www.gotomypc.com...
>
> How much does that cost, for the individual package, as it seems I have
> to divulge my 'personal' details just to see a price?

£12 per month.

Logmein has a free account with more limited features, mainly no host
to remote printing.

JP

George Woodbine wrote:

> And what benefit does it give over TS/RDP or secure VNC?

The host PC only has XP Home on it and we did trial VNC. The user
needs remote printing and sees an improvement in screen update speed
with gotomypc

JP

John P wrote:
> George Woodbine wrote:
>
>> And what benefit does it give over TS/RDP or secure VNC?
>
> The host PC only has XP Home on it and we did trial VNC. The user needs
> remote printing and sees an improvement in screen update speed with
> gotomypc

I see, I took it forgranted you were using XP Pro when you mentioned an
office environment.

IME I've definitely found RDP faster than both gotomypc and VNC.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...
> On 2005-11-26 01:58:28 +0000, Boss Hog
> <(E-Mail Removed)> said:
> > In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> > (E-Mail Removed) says...
> >
> >> I work as a PC doctor
> >
> > oh fuck do I hate that 'term'.
>
> So do I, but not as much as "IT Consultant".

So if you hate "PC Doctor", /and/ "IT Consultant" (the latter of which
is a more likely accurate description of what you do), what 'title'
would you like?