Submitted by pgraber on July 21, 2006

My professional position provides me with the ability to remotely log-in to my office computer via the Web. From anywhere in the world I can be in working at my office machine 'virtually', identical to if I was sitting in front of it.

Thinking about it, the ability to get to my home machine from anywhere could be a lifesaver. It also would make carrying a flash drive useless. Although I've used a jump drive for a number of years, Murphy's Law always takes over. It never fails that the file I need is always on my home machine. Plus, I lost a drive once with a good amount of data on it and it forced me to make major security changes.

The Academy utilizes the fast-and-easy GoToMyPC.com. This tool performs wonderfully and is simple to set up. The only drawback is the price to use it. For personal use, it's $19.95/month. I thought this was pretty steep, so I set out to find a more economical way.

After a short amount of hunting, here's what I came up with.

RealVNC and DynDNS
RealVNC.com is a UK-based company spealizing in remote access software. As a test, I downloaded and installed their free Personal Edition. If things worked out, I planning on purchasing their $50 'enterprise edition'. Their package loads a 'VNC Server' and a 'VNC Viewer' application. The server and viewer is a whopping 800KB.

To set up the server, I following their online setup guide. It was pretty easy. What's nice about the package is the Java viewer. That means there's no download; any Java-enabled browser will work.

Configuring Firewall and Router
After the software install, I had to configure my Firewall and Wireless Router to accept connections from the Internet. This has been the toughest part. As I tinkered, I had the idea of accessing my computer via my company's domain name (Grabers.com) instead of just some IP addess. But because I use a cable mdoem for my connection and my IP address changes every so-often, I needed a solution to map my changing IP to my domain and have things refresh as they changed. This is where dyndns.org comes in: dynamic dns services.

Setting up DynDns.org
This part was tricky. You must purchase 'Custom DNS' services from them at $24.95 a year. If you want to forgo this, they also offer a free version, but the domain names you can pick from a limited. I thought it would be 'more enterprise' if I used my own domain.

After purchasing, you must then setup up host-services. This is where it got tricky. I had to setup (or re-create) all of A, MX, and CNAME entries in my Zone File at my hosting provider. This info as easily obtained.

Adjusting Nameservers
The final step in getting this all to work is adjusting your domain name server pairs are your registrar. You enter the DNS entries given by DynDNS.org. The only tedious part is waiting for everything to propogate.

What appears to happen is that requests are directed at DYNDNS. From their, the Hosts file takes over. In my case, all web servering and email is directed back to my hosting provider. But my remote-control services are directed to my personal machine.

By the time everything settled, it was 6:00ish. I had to get me router back working and continue to make adjustments. These will probably be ongoing over the next few days.

Final tweaks have included making things convenient when logging-in. Accomplished via a simple 301 redirect.

The most ironic part was testing. The first time I succesfully logged-in, I used my Gotomypc connection to access my office computer. Weird.

Cross Platform Access
A very cool thing about this method is the ease in which you have a 'virtual cross-platform' machine. When I'm traveling, I bring my Powerbook. But since a majority of my day-to-day stuff is PC related, I now have a way to work on that platform without relying on VirtualPC. I simply open up Safari and I'm golden.

Another thing I may now be able to live without is a jump drive. If I have an internet connection, I can access all of my files. So what's the use?

Responsiveness / Speed
The solution is a little bit sluggish, but acceptable. To help it out, I optimized my 'local' machine to run as streamlined as possible. A lot of this had to do with the UI. The machine looks a bit retro, buts its tremendously more responsive locally. This should help out.

Windows-to-Windows seems to render fine. On the Mac, you get some dithering: seems to be running at only 256 colors. I'll continue to play with this.

In any case, you can definately get work done. It's not bad.

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