Acessing files from another network

Matts1 · 13 Jun 2010

I need to access files on my laptop from other computers which aren't on the network, being one of the school macs (no privelages but I am able to use connect to server), and other windows computers on other networks.
So far:
The folder I want to share (Matt) is set for sharing.
I can connect to it from my mum's mac on the network - smb://192.168.1.2/School (using DHCP server so it never changes)
I have set it up so that at the times when I want to access it it turns on using computer management - task scheduler (and wake timers are enabled in battery plan).
I am using ESET smart security (and its firewall doesn't seem to be blocking it over the network)
I am using a billion bipac 7401 VGP R3, with its own hardware firewall.

My plan:
Use port forwarding in the virtual server on the modem so I can go to something like: smb://ip address:port number/School where ip address is the IP of the modem (which I know), and the port number is the external port (any number), which goes to the redirect port (don't know what goes there, but it's whatever port needs to be used for acessing files).

Punch a hole in the firewalls (easy when I know what port to use and don't need help on that)

Planned end result:
Be able to remotely open files and hopefully also save to there.

danteroxxx · 14 Jun 2010

It seems like an FTP server(File Transfer Protocol) or VPN server (Virtual Private Network) may be your best bet. With an FTP server up on whatever computer hosts the files you need, you can access it via a web browser (I know Firefox has built-in ftp support) and download/upload your files to it. Provided you arent locked down from Terminal on the Mac, you can use that too:

ftp
open ftp.server.ip.address (whatever the external IP might be)

With a VPN, you would have to be able to set up a VPN connection client on the Mac to be able to connect to it. I dont know if you would have the appropriate permissions though. Let me know what you think and we can go into further detail if you like.

Matts1 · 15 Jun 2010

On the school computers firefox is installed and although they disabled terminal, I have acess to iTerm under a bin.bash user
Also, on the macs you can use connect to server.
And, for security, it prompts for the password on the local network, so i'd assume that it prompts over the web and I have it set up so the only place you can do FTP at is school.