Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Hardware VPN - the cost effective solution

I've been periodically looking into various solutions for doing remote maintenance for my mother through firewalls, etc. It fiinally occurred to me that I might just as well implement a hardware VPN solution.

I've no idea if this D-Link DI-824VUP device is any good (ie reliable). It is impressive, however, that it includes VPN services, stateful packet inspection, 802.11g wireless, a print server and a microwave oven in a single package -- for about $120. A simpler device without wireless is about $60. So for $200 I could permanently link my mother's network to my own.

Why would I do this - besides doing maintenance remotely? So she can install a Squeezebox client to my music server ...

Update 1/5/06: From a comment below I found this summary of windows remote control options. I should also mention one I rather fancy - FogCreek CoPilot. The same comment also included a great link to Gibson's podcasts on security. I'm a Gibson fan, and the podcast list also includes transcripts. I may work these into my morning commute -- the very first podcasts I've bothered with.

I must say, I'm glad I enabled anonymous posts!

PS. In editing this post I accidentally made it transiently vanish. Sorry.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

For software solutions you may be interested in this discussion as well as Steve Gibson's vpn podcasts