Networking . . .

[khushy]

we have two locations - my office at home and our shop.

Home - server, my PC + a Laptop - with 5 x fixed IP addresses and 8mb Broadband

Shop - 1 PC with no fixed IP and a separate Broadband account

QUESTION

Can I configure the shop PC to use the gateway/router address that I have at home so the Shop PC becomes part of our home network and has one of the 5 x fixed IP addresses??

Khushy

[roadsweeper]

Yes. You can use conventional VPN, perhaps using Dynamic DNS to control the connection, or SSL-VPN with a client-side plug-in to allow mapped drives on your shop PC allowing you to access your files and folders on your home PC.

Having said that, it does depend on what you want to do. If you just want access to files you could set up an FTP server (say FileZilla Server) on your home server and that would do fine?

[sneakyneil]

I hope I understand the situation correctly - Have you got something like the Griffin package at home that gives you loads of internet IP's instead of the more usual one single one? and the shop PC presumably just has a USB modem and it's own IP again? That being the case, the machines allready are on the same network, that network being the internet...

To answer the question, No you can't use one of the five fixed IP addresses that your home ISP gives you on your shop PC - it will stop working if you try. If I've understood, the routing won't work and you won't be able to receive any data.

[roadsweeper]

sneakyneil said:

I hope I understand the situation correctly - Have you got something like the Griffin package at home that gives you loads of internet IP's instead of the more usual one single one? and the shop PC presumably just has a USB modem and it's own IP again? That being the case, the machines allready are on the same network, that network being the internet...

To answer the question, No you can't use one of the five fixed IP addresses that your home ISP gives you on your shop PC - it will stop working if you try. If I've understood, the routing won't work and you won't be able to receive any data.

I'm not sure that's right.

For example, on my company network we have a server sat in a datacentre (in this case analgous to his home PC). We then have employees working from home around the country (equivalent to a shop). Each employee uses an SSL-VPN connection to the server and hence has two IP addresses - the IP address on their home network and a LAN IP allocated to them by the SSL-VPN unit. In front of the SSL-VPN unit sits a hardware firewall using NAT and I would imagine we could use one of the datacentre static IP addresses routed to the LAN IP address assigned to the employee's home computer by the SSL-VPN unit.

However, the above topology uses some expensive hardware but I would imagine it could be replicated on the cheap. I guess the question is, does the shop IP have to be on eo fthe 5 home IPs or can the poster just pay an extra £10 or so per month to get a static IP for the shop? Alternatively, will Dynamic DNS provide some kind of workaround?

I think we need more info on what you're trying to achieve to help here khushy!

[SneakyNeil]

roadsweeper said:

sneakyneil said:

I hope I understand the situation correctly - Have you got something like the Griffin package at home that gives you loads of internet IP's instead of the more usual one single one? and the shop PC presumably just has a USB modem and it's own IP again? That being the case, the machines allready are on the same network, that network being the internet...

To answer the question, No you can't use one of the five fixed IP addresses that your home ISP gives you on your shop PC - it will stop working if you try. If I've understood, the routing won't work and you won't be able to receive any data.

I'm not sure that's right.

For example, on my company network we have a server sat in a datacentre (in this case analgous to his home PC). We then have employees working from home around the country (equivalent to a shop). Each employee uses an SSL-VPN connection to the server and hence has two IP addresses - the IP address on their home network and a LAN IP allocated to them by the SSL-VPN unit. In front of the SSL-VPN unit sits a hardware firewall using NAT and I would imagine we could use one of the datacentre static IP addresses routed to the LAN IP address assigned to the employee's home computer by the SSL-VPN unit.

However, the above topology uses some expensive hardware but I would imagine it could be replicated on the cheap. I guess the question is, does the shop IP have to be on eo fthe 5 home IPs or can the poster just pay an extra £10 or so per month to get a static IP for the shop? Alternatively, will Dynamic DNS provide some kind of workaround?

I think we need more info on what you're trying to achieve to help here khushy!

I read his post to mean that he had one of the broadband packages that gives you five valid internet IP's (from a block of 8), and that he was asking if he could give his shop PC one of them even though its at a different physical location, in which case the answer is what I said. If he just has a normal nat router setup then a vpn is the answer, as you said. It's difficult to advise further though without a) clarifying this point and b) knowing exactly what the end result is that the op is seeking to achieve..

[malman]

sneakyneil - I think you're right
roadsweeper - I think you're right



sounds like he has a five IP account with a provider
if he used a vpn endpoint be it ssl,ipsec or pptp then yes it could give the shop PC one of the public 5 IPs and in essence be on the lan of home server. He couldn't just swap the IP of the shop PC and expect it to work

But

his home server could just be on a public static behind a NAT router with 5 DHCP reservations its not that clear from the original post.

Original poster
What operating system is the server running as if you have something like windows 2000/2003/xp pro you have a valid PPTP endpoint waiting to be configured