Teleport VNC Client Allows Remote Access to Your Computer

[jsimpson]

Conect ot work?

Ok I have a VPN connection working on my iPhone back to my office. I want to connect to my Mac there. I thought I would be able to start the VPN connection and then enter the Mac info and connect to it but no luck. Can someone explain this to me please. I read through the thread and don't see anything that really "clears" it up for me. I do not want to have to open up port 5900 unless I just have too.

Thanks!

 

[CommanderData]

PassiveJJ, I have not seen any home networking router that supports L2TP.

For PPTP, there's quite a bit of FUD out there. In PPTP VPNs, the connection's encryption is based on your password as a seed for the pseudorandom encryption algorithm. If you have a small, common password (if you do and care about security CHANGE IT IMMEDIATELY ) that makes it easier to brute force guess the password which then gives away the encryption seed.

The link you provided actually supplies a link on it that backs up my statements:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=21

Now, here's the twofold protection for you on PPTP:
1) Use a Strong Password. Upper and lowercase characters, numbers, and symbols. As many characters as you can remember. Every extra character you add increases the time to brute force your password. It may be minutes to crack at less than 8 chars, probably years to crack at 16+ chars.
2) Make your PPTP VPN connections over EDGE/3G only. WiFi sniffing is commonplace, don't give them a chance. Sniffing cell traffic is virtually impossible these days unless you're a government agency.

You've got the right attitude about security, welcome to the tin-foil hat club

 

[PassiveJJ]

CommanderData: I found a consumer VPN router that claims to support all iphone VPN protocols (L2TP, PPTP, and IPSec) plus wireless! This could be a winner; check out the D-Link DIR-330: http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=564

VPN Tunnels: 25* (IPSec, PPTP, L2TP)

PPTP/L2TP Server/Client

Looks reasonably priced too (~$100): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127237

This way I could try for extra security with L2TP or IPSec and fall back to PPTP support with a strong password if those don't work. Am I missing something here? This router seems to good to be true...

 

[CommanderData]

CommanderData: I found a consumer VPN router that claims to support all iphone VPN protocols (L2TP, PPTP, and IPSec) plus wireless! This could be a winner; check out the D-Link DIR-330: http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=564



Looks reasonably priced too (~$100): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127237

This way I could try for extra security with L2TP or IPSec and fall back to PPTP support with a strong password if those don't work. Am I missing something here? This router seems to good to be true...

Hey, that's a pretty neat set of features! Some painfully bad reviews at newegg though. I think some of those guys were trying to do things that I wouldn't bother with unless I was using at least the RV082, or actual Cisco ASA gear (stuff like a dedicated tunnel between two sites using two routers, etc). This hardware is just not powerful enough for business, but supporting all three protocols is great for you. I wouldn't hold my breath for IPSec compatibility with the iPhone VPN client (try it though, I'd love to know if it works with any non-Cisco hardware), but L2TP and PPTP should be fine.

I looked at the manual, it's a bit sparse on VPN info. It does have 3 or 4 pages though, and shows the web interface configuration screens. The PPTP server actually has more options than my setup, including encryption options for none/40 bit/128 bit.

Please let me know how you make out with this unit. I'd like to be able to recommend a good, low priced model to other iPhone owners.



Bear Hunter - the Airport Extreme does not appear to have any VPN server functionality. You probably saw VPN Passthrough, which allows you to set up a VPN server of some sort connected to the Airport Extreme. The VPN data will be allowed to flow to/from the internet to your VPN Server device. Since I don't have an Airport Extreme I can't verify what you saw unfortunately.


jsimpson - you say you have a working VPN link to your office now? When you go in and select the VPN on your iPhone and turn it "on", do you eventually authenticate and show "connected" with a connected timer counting up? If so then the hard part is over. From there you should be able to define a connection to your Mac in the office in Teleport (make sure you get the Mac's IP Address and you have Leopard with Screen Sharing turned ON). When you are on the local network Teleport will auto-detect Macs with bonjour, but this auto discovery does not appear to traverse the VPN (I have not looked into why that is yet).