conecting to remote server

I have friend who connects through the internet via cable. His cable is hooked up to his router. One port goes out to his home computer running WinXP, while the other port runs to a box running Windows 2000 server.

Now if I wanted to access his server from the Internet, how would we go about setting this up? What is the best way of doing this? I've read about VPNs and some protocols about PPTP but still not understanding it very well. Do we need to rearrange the setup? Any help appreciated

VPN would be the best way to do this.

Are you connected to the internet via Cable or DSL? If so, you can use a VPN router on either end to solve the problem as well as protect your computers.

There are various ones on the market. Linksys has a Linksys BEFSX41 EtherFast Cable/DSL Firewall Router (4-Port 10/100 Switch / VPN Endpoint) for around $65 on amazon.

Tfs, I'm conected at home via PPP Dial-Up connection. Is that going to affect how I VPN to my friends server?

I have read the very interesting NAT section and have a question for Chris, or anyone else that can answer this.

If my friend has a NAT enabled router thats connected to a server and workstation, what happens if I try to get to his server box through VPN? In another words, how does VPN know how to get to his public IP, traverse the NAT enabled router, then find the server instead of the workstation? Does it have to do with how my friend sets up the router/server or is it something I have to do on my end.

Sorry if these questions don't make much sense. Im getting buffer overflows here and my cache can not handle it all...hehe. :lol:

Your dialup is just a pipe. When I am away, I have done it using an AOL dialup to get my pipe, close the pipe and use my VPN client to connect through the pipe to the VPN on the other side (this is the important part - you must have VPN on both sides).

I am not sure of you set up, but you typically have a VPN device on the one side (house, office etc) that you are trying to get to. You also have a VPN device from your side that is configured to talk to the other VPN device. You set your security policy and what your remote connections are (this would be the local network - 192.168.120.0 - 255.255.255.0, for example). The VPN on the other side would do the same and have your local network as its remote connection.

The point is you need to set up reciprocal connections on each end of the VPN tunnel.

Thx for the reply.

Another question...Is there a way I can make my dynamic IP of my modem synchronize with the NIC so that both of them are using the same IP?

A little confused here on what you are asking?

Modems don't have IPs.