Remote access of LAN

[benwood]

I have a small home LAN consisting of 6 PCs. Four of the PCs are running Windows 7 Home Premium x64 and two of them are running Windows 10. I'd like to be able to connect to any of them remotely with my Win 10 laptop or Android tablet. Can some tell a newbie how to do this? Do I need a VPN? How do I set one up to do this?

 

[sdifox]

You could just install teamviewer on all of them.

Or setup open on on one of the machines and then remote desktop to the other ones from that one once you are connected to openvpn.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

TeamViewer will work, but is a security risk even ignoring the fact a third party has access to your PC via closed source code. NoMachine is very comparable and is not a security risk like TeamViewer is, but would be easier to use if you set up a host name for your LAN via DDNS (eg, DuckDNS) and gave each machine a specific port (either via port forwarding in the router or specifying port in NoMachine settings).

If all you want is access to local folders from outside your LAN then yes, OpenVPN would work, otherwise OpenVPN is unnecessary.

 

[holden j caufield]

There are many remote programs out there, probably best to avoid teamviewer for now. You router might have an option for some type of tunneling pptp option. DDWRT, tomato etc have this option.

 

[benwood]

NoMachine sounds like what I need. But I want to connect to more than one computer on my LAN and I only have one external IP address as my LAN is sitting behind a router and the computers on the LAN have addresses in the 192.169.1. range. How do I specify which computer to connect to?

 

[mxnerd]

Just tried NoMachine (which is open source by the way).

Teamviewer is a lot easier, but if you are really concerned with security, NoMachine is an option besides others (http://alternativeto.net/software/teamviewer/?license=free).

You can keep one PC always on and then use NoMachine to access it from outside world.

For internal usage, then use TightVNC on that machine to access other PCs (also with TightVNC installed) on the LAN.

Of course you can use NoMachine too on LAN, but I think TightVNC is more lightweight.

Only Pro (& up) editions of Windows have remote desktop, Home edition does not.

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.ezlan.net/vnc.html

 

[nk215]

Look into VPN (OpenVPN). When you VPN into your private LAN, it's like you just plug your remote machine directly into the local switch. You'll access each machine on your LAN with internal IP address.

It's very easy to setup and works great. I've never setup an OpenVPN server on a windows machine so I don't have experience with it (my servers are linux based) but it can't be that complicated.

 

[benwood]

So I set up Dyndns on my Actiontec Verizon FIOs router and I can reach my router's external IP. But how do I tell Nomachine which of the internal IPs to use to reach a specific PC. The internal LAN IPs are in the 192.168.x.x range and thus aren't routable over the Internet. Do I use the External IP then a port number to reach a specific PC, for example: 72.72.221.19 port 27001 for my 1st PC and forward port 27001 to the 1st PC, 72.72.221.19 port 27002, for the second PC, etc? There's something I'm not getting. Please break it down in the simplest possible terms. Thanks.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Yes, specific ports can be forwarded to specific machines, either in the router config or by specifying the port in the NoMachine config. NoMachine uses UPnP to open ports, but if you have UPnP disabled in the router then you'll have to open the ports manually.

With DynDNS setup on the router, you then connect to a specific machine by using <DynDNSDomain>:27001. There's no need to use WAN IP address from outside the LAN.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

It should be noted that NoMachine uses Port 4000 by default, but opens a different port via UPnP which you connect to from outside the LAN. This Gateway port seems to be random, but can be specified in the preferences by double-clicking on the GW Port as seen in the screenshot below.

 

[Makaveli]

I would stay away from Teamviewer right now based on the recent hacks.

 

[sdifox]

I would stay away from Teamviewer right now based on the recent hacks.

Doesn't sound like they were hacked. More like people reusing pwd everywhere.

if you got info that says otherwise please share.