I just started working for a company and have discovered that I know more
than he does when it comes to IT, however I do not know how to set up a VPN.
I live almost 400 miles away from my office and only visit about once a week.
All of us who work at the office would like to be able to access our work
computers from home without having to use a program such as Logmein.com or
mypc.com

What settings do I need to configure on my laptop, and what settings do I
need to configure on my work computer? And to follow that, how would I set
up a remote desktop connection?

Any help would be much appreciated!

"Jayson" wrote in message
...
I just started working for a company and have discovered that I know more
than he does when it comes to IT, however I do not know how to set up a
VPN.
I live almost 400 miles away from my office and only visit about once a
week.
All of us who work at the office would like to be able to access our work
computers from home without having to use a program such as Logmein.com or
mypc.com

What settings do I need to configure on my laptop, and what settings do I
need to configure on my work computer? And to follow that, how would I
set
up a remote desktop connection?

Any help would be much appreciated!

As far as Vista-to-Vista Remote Desktop is concerned see this page for help.
Make sure you use a strong password...

http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.or...endations.html

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/you...d/checker.mspx

If you have a XP Client and Vista host make sure they are configured like
this. If you have a Vista client and a XP host configure the Vista client
like the XP client...

http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.or...ntSettings.jpg
http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.or...rverConfig.jpg

To access multiple PCs with Remote Desktop behind a router...

http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.or...ple_PC_RD.html

If you want to setup one PC as a PPTP VPN server see this page. Keep in mind
Vista will only accept one incoming VPN connection at a time so if you need
additional connections you need to install a server class OS like W2K3 or
SBS, purchase a VPN end-point type router, or use something like OpenVPN or
Secure Shell (SSH)...

http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.or...P/PPTPVPN.html

http://www.onecomputerguy.com/networ...vpn_server.htm
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/networking/xp_vpn.htm

For a small office/home office a SSH server makes sense, at least to me. Its
easy to setup, users can access shared files on the server PC and you can
reach any PC behind the router and SSH server using Remote Desktop.

http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.or...-HomeUser.html

If you choose this method I recommend installing copSSH on one PC. copSSH is
a windows installer package of OpenSSH/OpenSSL/cygwin and is updated as
those are updated. I also recommend Tunnelier as the SSH/SFTP client. A nice
thing about Tunnelier is you can configure it to automatically launch a
Remote Desktop session to a selected PC when the SSH tunnel is established.
It can also be configured to drop the SSH tunnel once the Remote Desktop
session is completed. Some SSH links...

http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.or...cureShell.html

You can also create and use private/public key pairs protected by passwords
for strong authentication versus a password only (strong or otherwise).

--

Al Jarvi (MS-MVP Windows Networking)

Please post *ALL* questions and replies to the news group for the
mutual benefit of all of us...
The MS-MVP Program - http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights...