offsite networking

[Merlin]

My aunt asked me about something she called " VPN" I think this means Virtual Private Network but I am not sure. The goal is for my wife to be able to log into my aunts network using her ( my aunts) IP address. She said that her IP needs to me switched to static. Anyone know the specifics of what she is talking about ? and can you walk me thru the setup??

[DMB2000uk]

Have heard about it, but never used it, so don't know if this guide is any good but:
http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/ne ... 14,00.html

Dan

[kenc51]

You'll need to contact your ISP and request a static ip address. There's usually a charge for this.

[martini161]

im not sure ken but i think many routers can also give you a static ip

[DMB2000uk]

not to the internet, every time you turn off your router you'd get a new IP for the internet. Leaving it on 24/7 is a kind of workaround, but its not reliable enough to base something line a VPN on.

Dan

[hnzw_rui]

Your aunt can get a pseudo-static address from DynDNS.org, No-IP.com, TZO.com, etc. There are usually options in routers to automatically update the IP address associated with the hostname.

You can do VPN via software or you can buy expensive routers with built-in VPN. Last I checked, the ones from Cisco cost >$500. I only know that because we were checking the cost as the office wanted to move away from software VPN (Windows Server 2000).

I have a Linksys WRT54GL router (bought it for $60 from Newegg) and installed custom firmware DD-WRT v23 mini. There's a version of DD-WRT that includes built-in VPN so it might be worth a try. It's a cheap way of doing VPN. There's a bunch of custom firmware available for common consumer-grade routers so maybe you can read up on those. There's also Linux if you want to take the time to set it up and stuff. I haven't played with setting up VPN myself, so I really couldn't help that much.

A quick google search came up with the following links:
http://www.geek-pages.com/articles/late ... idged.html
http://www.computernetworkinghelp.com/c ... view/41/1/