Network drive access from home

[marvin]

Hi All

I am not sure if this is possible but i am trying to look into giving staff access to some of our network drives from home,

Is it possible to do this without too much hastle? What do i need to do on the server?

I have a windows 2003 server R2.

Thanks

[greenfieldsupport]

We give access through our VPN,

however if you talk to Joanne from dover grammer school for boys, they use a system called Karoshi.

Karoshi has a feature which you could use which allows staff / students to log into a website and access network shares, might be abit more secure than allowing full access to a VPN...

[dhicks]

I am not sure if this is possible but i am trying to look into giving staff access to some of our network drives from home,

This has come up a couple of times in the past few weeks. WebDAV is a good way to allow access to your files - search the forums for WebDAV, you'll find a couple of conversations about it.

Do you have a LEA to worry about, or do you have control over your own network? The LEA might block certain network ports and/or protocols. WebDAV is simply an extension to HTTP, so should be less likely to be blocked.

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David Hicks

[marvin]

We use EMBC which might block some ports i believe.

[dhicks]

We use EMBC which might block some ports i believe.

You're not going to get very far with any protocol if incoming connections are blocked by a firewall. Can you run your own web server (port 80, or port 443 for a SSL encrypted connection) from a machine on your network? If so, WebDAV should work okay. If not, one option might be to get some file space on an external server (either via the LEA or just buy space on a server someplace) and regularly synch the contents of user directories with that external copy via rsynch or similar.

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David Hicks

[marvin]

No this doesnt work!!!

Might have to look into something like Ranger outpost or similar?

[Domino]

No this doesnt work!!!

Might have to look into something like Ranger outpost or similar?

What doesn't work with it? is there a error message?

like dhicks says, if the LEA is blocking ports then buying a third party tool won't make any difference.

[marvin]

how do i check if i can access those ports internally?

[dhicks]

No this doesnt work!!!

What bit of which "this" doesn't work? Can you run a web server somewhere on a machine on your internal network - can you get to that machine by typing its local IP address into your web browser (i.e. http://10.0.0.20 or whatever) and seeing a web page? After that, can you open a port in your firewall to allow access to this machine from the outside world (can you "port forward" a port number on your router to the IP address/port number of your web server)?

Might have to look into something like Ranger outpost or similar?

This will cost money - personally I'd prefer to spend money on an externally hosted server that I could do what I liked with.

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David Hicks