Remote access

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Friday 14 October 2011 05:13:53 KC8LDO wrote:
> Is there a way to use ssh to get through a firewall for remote access to a
> system? The situation I'm looking at is a Fedora system sitting behind a
> company firewall, which I have no control over, that I wish to gain access
> to by logging into it over the Internet from a remote computer. In other
> words the connection is initiated from outside of the firewalled company
> network.
> 
> What I'm thinking is using ssh to forward a port, 3389, to another computer
> on my own private network (also behind a firewall and NAT router) at home
> acting as a middle man. Then from another computer, lets say at a hotel,
> logging in to the same computer on my private home network and have it pass
> traffic bidirectionaly between the two end point computers.
> 
> Is this something than can be done using ssh and if so how? I would also
> like to have the remote Fedora system connection to the middle man computer
> remain even if the remote computer is not connected.

You want to look into OpenVPN. It does take some time to read the docs and set 
it up, but it's worth it.

  http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source.html

Essentially, it adds a virtual ethernet device (called tap) to each machine, 
and connects these into a virtual LAN. From that point on you can do whatever 
you want, as if the machines were next to each other in the same room, 
connected to an ethernet switch.

It may happen that the default openvpn port is blocked by the company firewall. 
In that case just reconfigure your machines to use openvpn on some port that is 
not blocked. Other than that, openvpn will work for you all over the globe, 
and it is completely under your control.

Best, :-)
Marko