P
(PeteCresswell)
On-and-off for over a month, I've been trying to set up something
where I can take over the PC of a family member about 100 miles
away in order to troubleshoot whatever PC-related problems
they're calling me about - hoping to mitigate the time sink
aspect of those situations.
I can get both Remote Desktop and RealVNC working locally, no
problem.
Where I'm stumbling is establishing the VPN tunnel.
My home PC is on a router hooked into Verizon's FIOS.
The remote PC is hooked into a DSL modem on Verizon's
"High-Speed" service. No router, but currently moot bc I'm only
working with two of my own PCs.
For testing/development across the internet, I connect a
WiFi-enabled laptop into a cooperating neighbor's wireless router
so it's on a different IP address.
RealVNC seems tb the ticket if I would just resolve the VPN
issue.
The whole things tb more complicated by virtue of IP addresses.
Neither mine nor the remote's is static and the address (per
IpChicken) seems tb something other than the address of the PC
(I'm guessing the router...). Somebody somewhere said something
about the two LANs having tb on different subnets to get VPN to
work. Sounded local on the surface, but I didn't go any deeper.
I spent a couple of hours with OpenVPN, but couldn't even get to
first base.
Went through a couple of "how-to" articles on setting up Windows
XP "Network Connections", but couldn't even get it off the ground
locally.
Bottom line: can I throw some money at this and make the VPN
issues go away by buying a couple of "VPN End-Point" routers?
We've tried the Remote Assistance thing in Windows XP, and gotten
it to work one way (from the remote to my PC)... but not the way
we need it to work (from my PC to the remote) - so we abandoned
that approach, figuring it was some built-in constraint on the
remote's DSL modem setup.
where I can take over the PC of a family member about 100 miles
away in order to troubleshoot whatever PC-related problems
they're calling me about - hoping to mitigate the time sink
aspect of those situations.
I can get both Remote Desktop and RealVNC working locally, no
problem.
Where I'm stumbling is establishing the VPN tunnel.
My home PC is on a router hooked into Verizon's FIOS.
The remote PC is hooked into a DSL modem on Verizon's
"High-Speed" service. No router, but currently moot bc I'm only
working with two of my own PCs.
For testing/development across the internet, I connect a
WiFi-enabled laptop into a cooperating neighbor's wireless router
so it's on a different IP address.
RealVNC seems tb the ticket if I would just resolve the VPN
issue.
The whole things tb more complicated by virtue of IP addresses.
Neither mine nor the remote's is static and the address (per
IpChicken) seems tb something other than the address of the PC
(I'm guessing the router...). Somebody somewhere said something
about the two LANs having tb on different subnets to get VPN to
work. Sounded local on the surface, but I didn't go any deeper.
I spent a couple of hours with OpenVPN, but couldn't even get to
first base.
Went through a couple of "how-to" articles on setting up Windows
XP "Network Connections", but couldn't even get it off the ground
locally.
Bottom line: can I throw some money at this and make the VPN
issues go away by buying a couple of "VPN End-Point" routers?
We've tried the Remote Assistance thing in Windows XP, and gotten
it to work one way (from the remote to my PC)... but not the way
we need it to work (from my PC to the remote) - so we abandoned
that approach, figuring it was some built-in constraint on the
remote's DSL modem setup.