I have two different ways of connecting to home:
I run the Adito OpenVPN ALS package on a PC. This app is a SSL VPN that allows clientless (web browser based) connection to other devices. It has plugins for VNC, Remote Desktop, WebDav, SSH, and even web redirects.
With this solution I can remote control to boxes at home that:
– are running UltraVNC,
– are running Windows Remote Desktop
– only have a web interface (like my router/firewall, APC UPS, APC PDU, etc)
– SSH to my VMware server.
Since VMware supports VNC natively, I can even control VMware guests down to the (virtual) bios level.
The webdav feature lets me remotely browse the file system of my NAS as if it’s just another folder on my desktop.
I might mention that I used to run the OpenVPN app as a separate PC, but now I run VMware ESXi at home, so it’s a virtual machine (XP). I have also tested OpenVPN on Ubuntu 10, and it works great there too (also as a guest VM).
There is a Windows installer package for Adito…it takes about 20 minutes to get it all running, and the only firewall/router change is to open port 443 and perhaps setup a DynDns account if you don’t have a static IP address.
Get Adito from SourceForge or this guy named Lars
Adito (Now called OpenVPN ALS)
Adito is also part of Amahi, for those who want to do the whole ‘home server’ route.
http://www.amahi.org/
But if you want to keep it simple: just use UltraVNC
I use UltraVNC as a secondary method to connect to my home LAN for my iPhone (I also use this locally all the time at home on my iPhone to do PC maintenance or look at CCTV footage or feeds).
It is not 1000% secure, but if you run UltraVNC on a non-standard port number, that works very well.
UltraVNC supports connection from both a Windows client, or from a Web browser. I use the MochaVNC app on my iPhone. Personally I run UltraVNC in ‘Server Mode” on ALL my home PCs, this way I can remotely connect to them..either by establishing a VPN connection thru OpenVPN, or indirectly by connecting to one PC then remote-connecting to another from there.
Part of what I use this for is to monitor my CCTV video both locally and remotely via iPhone or PC.
