Remote Access between 2 x XP ADSL machines

  • Thread starter Thread starter Blackberry
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Blackberry

Hi All

Just wondered if you had any ideas on this one. I have 2 x nursery schools
that are 2 separate buildings, but are only the width of a road apart, ie
they are separated by a single road.

We are looking to install ADSL at both sites and rather than email files
between sites or walk backwards and forwards across the road, we wanted to
put in place a sort of network link so that machines on both sites had a
designated shared 'folder' that they could drop things in and the other site
could pick up - does that make sense?

Basically if I was on a standard LAN and I had a shared folder others could
have access to that shared folder only and drag and drop things in and out.
What I want to do is extend that so that these sites have access this way
over ADSL/the Internet.

Do you know of a way that I can do this?

I've done the whole remote desktop thingy, but I want to be able to drop
stuff into a folder rather than take over somebody's desktop.

Thanks
 
Blackberry said:
Hi All

Just wondered if you had any ideas on this one. I have 2 x nursery
schools
that are 2 separate buildings, but are only the width of a road apart, ie
they are separated by a single road.

We are looking to install ADSL at both sites and rather than email files
between sites or walk backwards and forwards across the road, we wanted to
put in place a sort of network link so that machines on both sites had a
designated shared 'folder' that they could drop things in and the other
site
could pick up - does that make sense?

Basically if I was on a standard LAN and I had a shared folder others
could
have access to that shared folder only and drag and drop things in and
out.
What I want to do is extend that so that these sites have access this way
over ADSL/the Internet.

Do you know of a way that I can do this?

I've done the whole remote desktop thingy, but I want to be able to drop
stuff into a folder rather than take over somebody's desktop.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes, it can be done. It is referred to as a Virtual Private Network.
All machines included in a VPN appear as if they were connected
to the same LAN, except for speed. These days LANs operate at
100 MBits/second. VPNs are much slower - perhaps around 0.5/0.1
MBits/s. The first figure is the download speed, the second the upload
speed. Check your ADSL plan to see what you have.
 
Hi Pegasus

Many thanks for the feedback on this.

I'm familiar with VPNs, but it always seems that people who use them always
use 3rd party software/hardware, never the built-in XP method. Why is this
case? Surely this XP method should work or is that asking too much? Is it
simply a case of making sure both sites have static IPs from the ADSL
provider, open up/port forward a designated port in both ADSL router/modems
(this is what I'm going to get) and then start to link up using the XP
connection wizard?

Thanks


Blackberry said:
Hi All

Just wondered if you had any ideas on this one. I have 2 x nursery
schools
that are 2 separate buildings, but are only the width of a road apart, ie
they are separated by a single road.

We are looking to install ADSL at both sites and rather than email files
between sites or walk backwards and forwards across the road, we wanted to
put in place a sort of network link so that machines on both sites had a
designated shared 'folder' that they could drop things in and the other
site
could pick up - does that make sense?

Basically if I was on a standard LAN and I had a shared folder others
could
have access to that shared folder only and drag and drop things in and
out.
What I want to do is extend that so that these sites have access this way
over ADSL/the Internet.

Do you know of a way that I can do this?

I've done the whole remote desktop thingy, but I want to be able to drop
stuff into a folder rather than take over somebody's desktop.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes, it can be done. It is referred to as a Virtual Private Network.
All machines included in a VPN appear as if they were connected
to the same LAN, except for speed. These days LANs operate at
100 MBits/second. VPNs are much slower - perhaps around 0.5/0.1
MBits/s. The first figure is the download speed, the second the upload
speed. Check your ADSL plan to see what you have.
 
Some people prefer different functionality than the one included
with the Windows VPN, others claim that the security of third-party
VPNs is better. Perhaps some other respondent might comment
on these aspects. Suffice it to say that the VPN that is native to
Windows works very well.

While a static external IP address for the VPN host makes things
a little easier, it is not necessary. You can register a free domain
name with a number of organisations such as dyndns.com, then
instruct your ADSL router to update this domain name with your
current IP address. If your router does not have this functionality
then you can achieve the same with a service you run on your
VPN host, e.g. dyndns-updater. Once the domain name is linked
to your IP address, you refer to your VPN host site by its domain
name instead of its IP address.
 
Blackberry said:
Hi All

Just wondered if you had any ideas on this one. I have 2 x nursery schools
that are 2 separate buildings, but are only the width of a road apart, ie
they are separated by a single road.

We are looking to install ADSL at both sites and rather than email files
between sites or walk backwards and forwards across the road, we wanted to
put in place a sort of network link so that machines on both sites had a
designated shared 'folder' that they could drop things in and the other site
could pick up - does that make sense?

Basically if I was on a standard LAN and I had a shared folder others could
have access to that shared folder only and drag and drop things in and out.
What I want to do is extend that so that these sites have access this way
over ADSL/the Internet.

Do you know of a way that I can do this?

I've done the whole remote desktop thingy, but I want to be able to drop
stuff into a folder rather than take over somebody's desktop.

Thanks
Click to expand...

You might also consider a wireless router and network the two that way.
Whether you would get a quality signal from across the road, I can't
predict.
 
You might also consider a wireless router and network the two that way.
Whether you would get a quality signal from across the road, I can't
predict.
Click to expand...

Wireless routers would not work well for networking two different
buildings. The signals are just not reliable. There are specialized
wireless methods of networking between two building that are way more
reliable that the "standard" wireless routers you can find at any
local store, Theses specialized wireless devices are sold by
professional installers and can be very expensive.

As for setting up a ADSL wired VPN, you need to know that Windows XP
is limited. Windows XP Home does not have all the feature that XP Pro
has for networking and XP Pro is limited to 10 "shares." at the same
time.
 
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