VPN back to office, need to access webserver

realBabelfish

realBabelfish

realBabelfish

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Joined
23 Oct 2002
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Hi guys

first up networking isnt my strong point so maybe im doing something very wrong here.

owner at work is going to be off for a month or 2 for an op and wants to VPN into the office whilst off.

now, ive used teamviewer VPN and can access drives etc all fine.

what i would like next for her is to be able to access our web systems.

if i try and ping the webserver it gets the right IP but doesnt get a response. i can access the webserver via explorer. so im guessing i need to do something to enable access to webserver?

the webserver is just a windows 8 machine with zendserver on it (php, mysql and apache).

either that or some help on how to access the webserver via the web but that obviously has some security implications and i would rather go being able to access via VPN.

thanks for any replies, especially useful ones! :)
 
Does your webserver have a fixed local ip?

Once you're connected to the VPN, you should be able to access it using that IP address (provided the user connecting doesn't have a device on their private network with the same IP address - as that will take priority). As long as they are different subnets it shouldn't be an issue.

Do you have multiple vhosts setup on Apache or just the one site?

Jim
 
JimboTheGiant said:
Does your webserver have a fixed local ip?

Once you're connected to the VPN, you should be able to access it using that IP address (provided the user connecting doesn't have a device on their private network with the same IP address - as that will take priority). As long as they are different subnets it shouldn't be an issue.

Do you have multiple vhosts setup on Apache or just the one site?

Jim
Click to expand...

cheers for the reply Jim! :)

i dont think the webserver has a fixed IP. we just connect via http://webserver.... when in the office. i did try and fix it before but i didnt know the DNS and it all screwed up lol. the webserver's local ip is 192.168.1.68 (when in the office)

on the connecting machine i can access the webserver file system via start --> run \\webserver or \\7.85.149.75 (which is the ip given to it via teamviewer VPN). i just get nothing in a browser.

no idea about vhosts setup on apache. i can do all the mysql and php stuff but never really got into the apache setup as zendserver seems to set it up for me.
 
realBabelfish said:
cheers for the reply Jim! :)

i dont think the webserver has a fixed IP. we just connect via http://webserver.... when in the office. i did try and fix it before but i didnt know the DNS and it all screwed up lol. the webserver's local ip is 192.168.1.68 (when in the office)

on the connecting machine i can access the webserver file system via start --> run \\webserver or \\7.85.149.75 (which is the ip given to it via teamviewer VPN). i just get nothing in a browser.

no idea about vhosts setup on apache. i can do all the mysql and php stuff but never really got into the apache setup as zendserver seems to set it up for me.
Click to expand...

Can you connect at http://192.168.1.68

I'm not familiar with the TeamViewer VPN, so maybe it isn't possible.

Do you have the option on your office Router to setup a VPN, or a NAS on the network that can act as a VPN server instead?
 
our NAS is basically the webserver. its only a small office of 5 people.

i cant connect to 192... on the end machine.

i will have a look at the office router and see. otherwise i could use windows VPN and see how that goes.
 
realBabelfish said:
not sure how secure that is though lol.
Click to expand...

I personally wouldn't be exposing a server to the internet without any security testing or 'hardening'.

You'd be better off setting up VPN access within Windows 8 (Tutorial Here) itself although arguably it uses PPTP and so it isn't the most secure of VPN protocols but it only takes a few mouse-clicks to set it up.
A OpenVPN server and client setup would be a better choice but it's a bit more hands-on in terms of setup - plenty of tutorials around like THIS however.
 
cheers again. sorry for awol but all of a sudden windows changed the server IP and refused to let me change it back, and no google to help! bloody windows!!!!

i will have a look again tomorrow. seems the router has stopped http traffic again for some reason now. bah, sod this, need a drink!
 
realBabelfish said:
ok, managed to free up port 80 in the router so now i can just access via internet. not sure how secure that is though lol.
Click to expand...

Is this a webserver for internal use only? Concerns me that you have just opened up port 80 on the router which im assuming is the servers default gateway to what I assume is an internal webserver for internal use only, people could exploit that if they had a public IP address for you. when you say free up port 80 what do you mean?


I would be looking at setting up an L2TP/ SSL type VPN connection.

Also servers should be statically assigned an IP
 
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