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Listen to the podcast: Hamachi - a simple VPN. 
Transcript
A common question I get at Ask Leo! is how to connect to disparate networks across the internet. For example a small business owner might want to connect to his workplace from his home network, or on a business trip one might want to connect to a work or home network as well.
Aside from Remote Desktop, which can be a little tricky to get working between local networks across the internet, the answer has always been a VPN, or virtual private network. In fact, VPNs are the solution of choice for most large corporations whose employees need access to the corporate network from remote locations. VPNs are secure, allow for various types of authentication, and when they work ... well, it's just like being there.
The problem is that VPNs can be difficult to setup - especially for novice or non-technical users.
Now I actually have the same scenarios that I've listed above: I travel occasionally, and I also have a my wife's small business several miles away that I would like to connect to more easily and directly.
Enter Hamachi. Hamachi is a very lightweight VPN client that I've been playing with for the last couple of days. It doesn't provide network-to-network connectivity like a traditional VPN might, but rather you choose which clients machines you want on your VPN by running the client software on them.
When connected using the VPN, it's the equivalent of being connected directly on a local area network. Now while name resolution doesn't seem to be in place yet, you can browse the network shares of the remote computer using it's Hamachi assigned IP address, connect via remote desktop if you like, and do pretty much anything you might if the computer were nearby on the same LAN. On-line games, naturally, stress this beta technology the most, and the support forums have many helpful pointers and hints for getting LAN based games to work across the Hamachi VPN.
Hamachi bills itself as a "mediated" - meaning that clients are registered with a Hamachi service so that they can be located and the initial connections established. All data transfer is directly peer-to-peer, secure and private.
Hamachi is in beta, it's free, simple and quick. You'll find it at hamachi.cc.
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Article C2524 - January 19, 2006
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
i now reinstalled hamachi and i have deleted evry hamachi file in system 32.......but now the problem is that the hamachi network adapter is not able aquire ip address....
Posted by: Vishwadeep at January 9, 2009 7:40 AMIt may be a useful tool, but there certainly a lot of troubles while performing the setup. I don't know how other users deal with this task, but i have really had a lot of troubles with this. I've been adviced to use the VPN of Secure Chanel(http://world-secure-channel.com/setup/). Can anyone tell me something about it? I would really need an advice about it.
Posted by: Cristina at February 12, 2009 5:55 AMI've now employed Hamachi as well and ditched the problematic MS VPN solution.
Posted by: velichks at February 20, 2009 1:16 PMThere would be miss dials, I'd have to restart the
"Routing and Remote Access" service sometimes as well as power cycle the modem.
Now I have no issues. Install Hamachi on the client pc's and set their
hosts file up and all is well. The notebook users benefit as well.
Hamachi is intelligent and knows when to use the
Local Area Network to peer when it can.
When remote and there is an internet connect a route is found via the net.[url=http://world-secure-channel.com/why/]vpn[/url]
Hamchi - it just works - it's great!!!
proxy is a new experience and quite neq level of Internet security.
Posted by: Dave at February 23, 2009 10:39 PMThanks Hamatchi works now thanks to your well explained tutorial unlike the other sites i visited :)
Posted by: Jilted at July 28, 2009 8:11 PM