Windows XP Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 62 Set Up a Virtual Private Network

Sometimes you would like to connect to your
home machine from work or while traveling. Making your home machine a
virtual private network (VPN) server is a secure way to accomplish
this.

If you've ever taken files
home to work on your personal computer you've
probably had the experience of arriving to work the next day only to
realize you've forgotten to bring the files back
with you. If the work was important enough, you probably had to drive
all the way back home get it or make a lame excuse to your boss as to
why you don't have the TPS report ready yet. Perhaps
you're a road warrior who has found himself stranded
in a hotel room on a Monday morning, just hours before a big meeting
without that copy of the presentation you thought you had copied from
your home machine. If either of these sound like a situation
you've been in, this is the hack for you.

It is well known that Windows XP has a VPN client built into it,
which allows you to make secure connections to your
company's network. Less well known is that Windows
XP also has the ability to act as a VPN server, allowing you, or
others you designate, to make secure connections into your home
network. While you have an established VPN session with your home
machine, you can access files from its hard drive or other machines
on the network that have file sharing enabled. All you need is a
local Internet connection and a VPN client that supports the
Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP),
which the client for all versions of Windows does.

Preparing your home machine to accept VPN connections is fairly
straightforward. Click Start Settings Control
Panel Network and Internet Connections Network
Connections Create a New Connection. This will launch the
New Connection Wizard. While advancing through this wizard, the
options you want to enable are "Set up an advanced
connection," "Accept Incoming
Connections," and "Allow virtual
private connections." The sixth screen of the wizard
allows you to specify the users that can use the VPN; make sure you
enable at least one account. If you haven't created
a password for your user, now is the time to do so. You are
essentially opening up a part of your machine to the Internet, so
make sure you choose a good password. After the wizard is complete,
nothing further needs to be done; the VPN is ready to accept incoming
connections. You can test this by using a VPN client to connect to
the IP address of the VPN server machine.

Most home
users use a router that provides Network Address Translation (NAT), which
obscures the actual IP address of the machine they want to make a VPN
connection to. This means you won't be able to make
a VPN connection to your machine until you configure your router to
allow the VPN traffic to pass through to your VPN server. See [Hack #47].