Need some networking help pleeease !!

vrfox

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Mar 28, 2006
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Hi all, I have recently been faced with the chalange of setting up a small office Lan Network. We are using a Linksys 8 Port Router and I am happy to say that I got our LAN Set up nicely and everyone in the office has access to the Interent.

In a Addition I have set up a shared folder on one of our computers so that everyone in the office can all access the shared folder and colaborate files.

Now when I set up the shared folder orginaly all I had to do was go to each computer in the office and type in the local LAN IP address of the computer that had the shared folder for example START-> RUN-> Then typed in 192.168.1.105 and clicked ok and than I got a list of shared folders and pritners that came up on for that computer... Vwala access to shared folder.

My dilema is that one of our co-workers has unfortunatly broke his hip in an accident and now is working from home.

And he can not access the shared folder by typing in the IP address of the computer in the office with the shared folder because it is a LAN IP address and behind a firewall.

I would like to make this as simple as posible.
Is there a way to give my co-worker access to this shared folder on the computer at our office behind the router on the office LAN, without having to set up a computer to be a DHCP or VPN server.
I just want to simply give access to one computer on our LAN to the outside world.

Now I figured that mabie it could be done by connecting to the WAN IP of the router (The IP address beeing issued to the Router by our ISP) from outside the LAN but I feer that If that is posible I do not have my router configured properly and do not know what to configure to do that.

The main thing is I am trying to avoid having to set up a bunch of technical software and turn my computer into some advanced VPN server I just simpply want to tunnel from the Interent through my router to my LAN and access the computer with the shared folder on it.

Please any thoughts or info would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry if this is a newbie question but when it comes to VPN I am new.
 

Simba-OS

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Mar 10, 2006
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Because any outer computer (that have a public IP address) isn't aware of computers in your LAN (that have a private IP addresses), every communication between local and outer computer have to be initiated from a local computer. To resolve your problem you should set up a "port forwarding" on your router. That means to tell your router everything that come from certain outer computer to a port you specify to forward to a local computer you specify.

Check your router documentation about it. And read some about NAT and port forwarding if you're not familiar enough with.

Good luck. :wink:
 

tekzone

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Feb 7, 2006
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Hello,

I think you're looking a bit too far... Why not just use a standard FTP server? You would just have to setup a server on the PC and forward port 21 to that PC.

VPN is nice, but FTP is definently a lot simpler to set up and use
 

Rangerdawg75

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Apr 25, 2006
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yeah I agree with Tek...a much simpler solution is an ftp server and for clarity here you dont' need another machine just dowlonad a freet ftp server software solution and install it on the machine at work you have the files set up to be shared. If you want a step by step to help make this flawless and painless (hopefully) with a few more tricks for security just post back and I will provide for you...

good luck,

Ranger
 

rickpcnerd

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Apr 25, 2006
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yeah, download free FTP server,and FTP client. You keep FTP SERVER and Outside World keeps FTP Client like Filezilla. Setup a user name, password, your IP Address, and folder to Share and Start Server. FTP Client all he has to do just enter username and password, and boom.Now hes connected with the office network. Lots of FTP Server dont take much cpu usage like CEREBERUS FTP CLIENT. This the simple way to share files to the outside world.