Thread: Setting up a VPN

Originally Posted by GReYVee

Originally Posted by Warprosper

Originally Posted by GReYVee

Originally Posted by SlytherN

Originally Posted by Partyball

How many users are you trying to support?

There is 4 users in 1 office and 1 in the other. The main initial goal here is for the office with 1 user to access quickbooks data which is located on a pc of one of the users in the other office

In this case you could just setup a single user RRAS. Easily accomplished with most home routers. Check out both site's router manuals for details on setup.

This wont work, he is going through a host site.. his ip is most likely private and wont translate until he hits his permanent end.... Ip passthru wont work either for the same reason.

Well If I understand this correctly, you have User-A part of a 4 computer LAN whom has the quickbooks data stored on their machine. And another User-B who is on a remote LAN. User-B wants to be able to access User-A's shared files (quickbooks stuff).

I've done exactly this before and it was a matter of ..

Enable PPTP passthrough or forwarding on the User-A LAN. (Port 1723)
Setup one host machine on User-A LAN (can be even done on User-A's workstation) to accept incoming VPN connections.
User-B sets up a connection to the VPN, using WAN IP / User credentials from User-A Lan.
User-A enables windows file sharing for the folder containing QuickBooks data
User-B connects to VPN and maps to the network share.


If you are looking for a very secure connection however, you are than going into hosting peap/RADIUS service which will just further complicate things. Really depends on the level of sophistication you want to get into, but that is the basic layout for a single-user VPN.


Edit: Here is a basic link to give you the idea of the process http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.or...P/PPTPVPN.html

Edit2: Almost forgot, if you have a spare box lying around the 4pc LAN. Look into this. it's free and fairly decent http://www.pfsense.org/

Yes this would work if the network he is connecting to had there own public ip... from what he is saying... they do not have their own public ip... so he cant us ip passthru unless the host is going to resolve it..

Does your client own an ip address at both sites...?

One office is in a Hotel and gets its internet from the hotel. I'm not sure how. The other office is in office complex and it gets its internet from the property. I'm not sure if these are direct feeds or go through routers then to the site. Looking into the installation manual of a router that supports router-to-router VPN I don't think it matters. Nowhere does it refer to port forwarding. I think these tunnel directly without the need of port forwarding. We will see soon.

Originally Posted by SlytherN

One office is in a Hotel and gets its internet from the hotel. I'm not sure how. The other office is in office complex and it gets its internet from the property. I'm not sure if these are direct feeds or go through routers then to the site. Looking into the installation manual of a router that supports router-to-router VPN I don't think it matters. Nowhere does it refer to port forwarding. I think these tunnel directly without the need of port forwarding. We will see soon.

The problem doesnt lie in your routers it lies in the hosts. If they have an ex ip of 65.83.140.4 all traffic you send will go out on that ip. If you setup a router beyond their firewall/router you will still go out on that ip. The host is going to have to give you a public ip and nat your address to it. (if they have one available ) Otherwise nothing you do will work inside the hosted network.

I'm not sure how IP Passthrough works... but if all you need is the WAN IP Address (like it seems...) then just watch the WAN IP with a program and have it e-mail to XXX@XXX.XXX whenever it changes... and they can set it up on the fly.

1 - Saves having to get a static IP.
2 - Dynamic IP's are a bit safer in the fact that "no one knows where you are".

I don't know if this will help you... but you can use PuTTY to tunnel into the network, and then setup quickbooks to use the localhost to access their files...

I suppose you could use Port 22 (SFTP) and that would be safe... but I'm not certain how SFTP works.

Originally Posted by GReYVee

Edit: Now if the case is-- some office he cannot control.. and some hotel he cannot control (sounds like a sketchy work around to me) -- than your very last option is a proxy tunnel. Every inter-network allows outbound traffic somewhere. And there are plenty of free solutions to do this. Hard cirumstances surely. But to me this is completely bypassing the ACLs set in the place for protection.

If this is the case it sounds like someone needs to talk to management/IT

Thats what seems to be the case.