Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, allows users to remotely access a particular computer.
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Corporations do this all the time. It's called a "VPN" or virtual private network, and it allows anyone on the internet, with the right user name and password, of course, to connect to a local network as if they were right on it.
I've toyed with setting one up myself, but have yet to actually done so. There are a couple of ways to go...
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The approach I expect to try first myself is to use a router that provides VPN functionality. For example, you might replace your NAT router with one that also supports VPNs, and then after some configuration your brother should be able to connect to your network.
The specifics of how that gets configured is the magic part that I'm not yet familiar with.
Having used them as a client in the past, the experience works something like this: the client (your brother, in this example) would simply create a dial-up connection that uses the internet instead of a modem, and "dials" your IP address, logs in, and gets connected through your VPN router or software. While he's connected to your VPN, he can see whatever drives you care to share. He might not be able to see the rest of the internet, though.
If you're running Windows XP on both ends (and XP Pro on at least one), you can also look into Remote Desktop. The current Remote Desktop Client will allow the drive(s) to be mapped to the client machine. The downside here is that Remote Desktop will take over the console of the server while you're connected.
And finally, various remote access packages provide VPN or VPN-like functionality. Packages to investigate include GoToMyPC, pcAnywhere, and RealVNC.
Practically Networked is also a good general resource, though perhaps a bit difficult to navigate.
Article C2321 - April 3, 2005
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.
Can i share music with my friends a nd how
Posted by: Kris at November 20, 2006 4:35 PMDear all,
i am having trouble with remote desktop connection. i want to copy some files to remote server from my laptop. My laptop is having windows XP pro and remote server is having Windows 2000 Server. I am using remote desktop connection and there i am checking the disk drive option under local resource..once i am connected to the server, i can't see my shared disk drives from my laptop..so pls guys help me...how do i make my disk drives visible in this windows 2000 server...
cao
Posted by: Santosh Kumar at May 25, 2007 1:15 AMsantosh
I can use my hard disk remotely because my brother is on out of state i can share my brothers hard disk so plz. send any software to share my pc & my brother pc through broadband
Posted by: Ganesh at March 18, 2008 12:18 AMDear u can access totaly any pc on internet through of teamviwer software and complitly handle internet pc
Posted by: Raghu at November 18, 2008 5:09 AMDidnt anyone think of a FTP solution here? Quite easy to set up and will do the job excellently, especially if you want to give access to only a share and not all the rest too.
Yes, TeamViewer is an excellent solution (with few exceptions) if you want to share your PC, but... you'll be opening up your PC completely to the other party and not just the share. Not so good if your buddy is a practical joker ;-).
However, this could much easier done by a FTP server. Set up a FTP server on your side with access accounts authorised on the (parts of the) disks/partitions you want to share. And the other party can log in on the FTP server you configured with a FTP client and access the authorised stuff. You can even configure which type of rights (create, read, write, delete) each account has.
Normally this is a quite secure solution. I would suggest to use strong paswords on the FTP accounts though, and if you think you need a bit of security on the data transfer preferably use a SFTP or FTPS protocol or plain FTP over VPN if you're really into it.
What? You were looking for freeware? Well, lots of FTP freeware servers and clients around.
Just look in Wiki or Google on FTP. FileZilla, client and server will for sure deliver, but there might be folks out there that have better suggestions.
06-Feb-2009