Virtual Private Networking

[philip]

Originally posted by Stormymystic: well, I have a question for all you smarties out there about networking now as well...sorry ronn going to borrow your thread instead of making a new one we are on a cable internet with a router, I networked my husbands laptop to mine with no trouble, but my brother wants to network with ours, and he is on wireless, and I have no idea how to even get started trying to netowrk with him....any advice?

Is that in the same house or close to each other? Then you need a router for wireless networks (couple of possible wired connections and antennas for wireless). The NIC in his computer must be able to communicate with the router, so you might need the same brand. Then your brother needs to install the card.
You need to set the routers SSID and don't broadcast it (otherwise others who pick up the signal can connect easily), your brother needs to set the SSID to the same so he can connect

If it's not in your home you probably need VPN and that's what some others here know [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Stormymystic]

he lives in another town

[Animal]

Originally posted by Stormymystic: he lives in another town

Then you need to set up a VPN. Wireless or not, as long as he can connect to the net, you just have to create a VPN server on your home network, give him a username and password and he can connect to your IP. Make sure you have the necessary TCP/IP ports forwarded on your router to the VPN server.

[Sir Kenyth]

You guys have to remember that a VPN is a "VIRTUAL" Private Network. That means it's not a physical network connection. You use techniques to make your computer see included machines on an unsecure internet connection as though they were on your LAN. That means fooling the computers by encrypting and encapsulating your LAN packets inside packets destined for the internet. Kind of like putting a letter in a locked and addressed envelope. It shoots across the internet until it gets to its destination network. There, the envelope is opened and the LAN packet is received by the recipient machine as though it came in from the LAN. In large networks, the VPN process is usually taken care of by a router connected to the internet. All VPN packets are opened and injected into the LAN, or received, packaged and sent out to the internet at this point . On single PC network connections like the home, it can all be taken care of by the PC.

[Ronn_Bman]

I'm still confused.

I can connect to my friend's machine without a problem, but we can't see each other's files(we both have file and printer sharing enabled). He cannot connect to my machine despite the fact that my router is set to allow VPN protocols to pass through.

Now when I disconnected my router and connected my computer directly to the modem, he could connect to my machine, but we still didn't have access to each other's files.

We both run Zone Alarm and have added each other's IPs to the trusted network. We've tried it with ZA off as well, but still the same problem; we can connect but there are no files shared between us.

I've read several articles, etc., online, and they are telling me the same things I've heard in this thread, but it isn't working for me.

Any more ideas?

BTW, does anyone have a VPN, and if so, how did you share your files after the connection?

[Sir Kenyth]

Originally posted by Ronn_Bman: I'm still confused. I can connect to my friend's machine without a problem, but we can't see each other's files(we both have file and printer sharing enabled). He cannot connect to my machine despite the fact that my router is set to allow VPN protocols to pass through. Now when I disconnected my router and connected my computer directly to the modem, he could connect to my machine, but we still didn't have access to each other's files. We both run Zone Alarm and have added each other's IPs to the trusted network. We've tried it with ZA off as well, but still the same problem; we can connect but there are no files shared between us. I've read several articles, etc., online, and they are telling me the same things I've heard in this thread, but it isn't working for me. Any more ideas? BTW, does anyone have a VPN, and if so, how did you share your files after the connection?

After you enable sharing, you have to manually set the share on the directories and printers. Enable sharing just means you have enabled the option. Right click on a directory or printer and you should see "sharing" as an option in the list. Go to it and set the share options (read only, write, etc.) in the dialogue box. Any resources you share will get a different icon. It will have a little hand under it.

[Ronn_Bman]

Sharing has been enabled, and still no luck.

[Animal]

You have two seperate issues here.

The first is the inability of the remote to connect to you behind a NAT router, but you can connect to him. This is a known issue with VPN's and NAT, and a lot seems to depend on the particular router in question. Make sure you have all inbound TCP/IP and IPSEC traffic associated with the VPN forwarded to your PC. An easy way to do this, is have your buddy run a port trace and make a notation of all the open ports, then connect the VPN and have him do another port trace. That will allow you to see what ports the VPN is using. You can use the command line and type in "netstat -a" without the quotes. Then simply telnet into your router, and forward the ports you need to.

The second issue is simple security privilidges that you have set in XP. If you want to set up file sharing you need to set up the username in a group that gives sufficient privilidges to do so, however if he is set up in two groups, the lower settings will always precede. I would advise against giving him admin privilidges.

It's not really advisable to give someone complete and total control of your PC, no matter how much you trust this person. I would set up a specific sharing directory and place any shared files in the one directory, and deny access to the rest of your PC.

[ 06-22-2004, 06:15 PM: Message edited by: Animal ]