Remote Network Administration for the Home and Small Office User

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Remote Network Administration for the Home and Small Office User

Remote network administration is a fast growing and widely used

technology in the IT field today. It gives system and network

administrators as well as home users the ability to fix problems,

allow or deny access to websites, download information directly from

another computer, and give program permissions for different users

from the office that they are at or from anywhere in the world that

has an internet connection. With this very powerful technology, come

some very significant problems such as securing remote access sessions

via data encryption, the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN’s) and a

vast amount of networking and connection problems that can occur.

There are very useful tools and articles that have been written and

programmed to help the network administrator or the savvy user that

wants to connect to his computer at home. This paper will focus on

network administration for small business and home users using a VPN,

Remote Desktop Connection and Symantec’s PC Anywhere for Microsoft

Windows XP Professional.

Personal experience has shown that working remotely is very difficult

to set up. This tends to discourage many users from using this kind of

technology because it requires a large amount of know-how and

patience. A SOHO user must have at least a basic knowledge about home

and office networking. Microsoft has put together a wealth of

information about not only their operating systems, but networking

using windows as well. The Microsoft knowledge base is a fantastic

source for information. It covers everything from error codes to

troubleshooting internet connectivity problems. Microsoft TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/default.aspx

) is a collection of information about slightly older content. Lastly,

the Microsoft Developers Network (http://msdn.microsoft.com ) is a

collection of articles, forums and journals straight from IT

professionals that develop for windows applications. Almost any SOHO

user can get the information that they need about any problem from

these websites. XP Pro is now the industry standard for an operating

system with advanced networking features. Working remotely for the

SOHO user starts with the configuration of the network in the home or

office. The small business users need to access all of their data at

all times. This is most efficiently done by having all computers in

the office connected to a central server, having the server host all

of the other computers and have all of the computers connected via a

workgroup. After that is accomplished, the SOHO user can then attempt

to establish a connection remotely.

A VPN is one of the most secure ways to connect to the home or small

office to date.

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