Bypassing Firewall/Router

Hello,

I am currently running a server from one location (server 1) that acts as a webserver to allow me access to files from anywhere over the internet. This server (server 1) is not behind any firewalls or routers. I have a second computer (server 2) in a totally different location that I would like to be able to serve files from as well. The problem is that the second computer (server 2) is behind a firewall and a router that I have totally no control over. I have spoken with the administrator and there is no possibility that they will open any ports for me. The firewall allows all outgoing traffic (no egress filtering).

Is there any way for me to allow access to the second computer over the internet? Possibly by using first computer (server 1) as some type of relay host?

It is NOT possible for me to install software on the actuall "client computer" since it changes and could be any computer anywhere. However, I CAN install software of any kind on either server 1 or server 2 since these are both MY computers. (I run NT 4.0 on server 1 and I run XP on server 2.)

Here is a diagram of my setup:


Thank you for any suggestions you may have.

If the firewall really allows all outgoing traffic then you could set up an L2TP/IPSec VPN with NAT transversal server up next to "Server 1" (or on it if you upgrade "Server 1" to Windows 2003). That'll get you the ability to share your files between your computers anyway.

Once you have your tunnel estabilished you could have "Server 1" map a network drive to a share with your files on "Server 2" then set up IIS (or whatever web server you're using) to use that mapped drive as your home directory for one of your sites.

Just a thought...
- James

What is the allowed traffic between server 1 and server 2..

You might be able to use server1 as a relay host.. but once again you said inbound traffic is blocked...


More details..

Thanks for the suggestions. I decided to set up a VPN with NAT transversal as suggested by bionicthumb.

The VPN client/server software I chose was WinGate VPN. I have used their proxy server software in the past and was pleased by its performance. Also, WinGate's VPN software is reasonably priced.

I was able to set up the VPN server on server 1. Server 2 required the same piece of software (except running in client mode). After modifying a few settings and generating certificates, the VPN was up and running.

So far I haven't encountered any problems. I set up the files from server 2 as a share and mapped a network drive on server 1 to the share on server 2. The webserver serves the files from server 2 almost as fast as local files on server 1.

Once again, thank you for the suggestions.