Router Set-Up (Novice)

Jekub · October 31, 2016

I'm really new to networking. I have a very basic knowledge, please bare that in mind.

Currently my home network consists of 1 Server (running windows server 2012 R2 Essentials), 2 Desktop Clients and a whole host of different wireless connected devices. I'm a student and do most of my work on my Surface Pro 4 that I carry around on a daily basis. What I'd like to be able to do is connect to my file server from the surface whilst I'm out of the house, i'd also like to be able to remotely control my server too, currently I use windows remote desktop from my desktop whilst I'm at home (I'm sure there are far better solutions). I figure a pretty reasonable way of accomplishing what I want is to set up a VPN however anywhere access on my server is incredibly confusing to set up.

Do I need to set my server up as a Router to enable a VPN to my home network? If I do this are there any noticeable benefits or drawbacks to doing this?

Are other operating systems easier to set up VPN's? I tried to put unraid on my Server (It's a HP Proliant DL380) and none of my 4x 72GB HDD's were found as devices.

jeffmeyer5295 · October 31, 2016

I don't have tons of experience with servers but if it were me I'd stick with RDP, I believe you just need to enable connections from outside your network in rdp settings then allow it in the firewall/router port settings. I might be completely wrong. Good luck!

.:MARK:. · October 31, 2016

You can keep your existing router as it is, and configure a vpn server in your home network, this is a server that will authenticate and accept connections on a listening port and allow a host to be essentially virtually present on the network. An easy solution for this is turnkeylinux openvpn. OpenVPN apps exist on almost any platform and so you can go anywhere and be able to connect to your home network provided you have the config file on the devices you want to use.

ultimatemythbuster · November 1, 2016

I would highly advise that you take the time to set yourself up a VPN server with something like OpenVPN. That way you can access your internal network without exposing RDP to the internet. Exposing RDP to the internet means that anyone could discover your machine on the internet and attempt to log into it. If you must make RDP open to the internet, at least look up how to change the default RDP port.