What is the best way to remotely access my PC from my laptop?

Gamer said:

Who has tried this?

I've done similar.

Gamer said:

Any advice?

You have security issues on your hands with this.

You'll have to open up your home network to the global internet one way or another, and that has problems. People 'port scan' for the ability to connect to remote desktop opportunities, or SSH servers, VPN ports, etc.

If you're wanting to do this, you'll have to consider:

- What can/will you do to prevent unauthorised access?

- Can you afford keeping electronics online 24/7 to facilitate what you're doing?

The way I had it setup was this:

- Raspberry Pi running on my local home network with an OpenSSH server, with fail2ban to block any repeated hacking attempts

- Using my router, setup port forwarding with a non-typical port (22 is typical for SSH) to the Raspberry Pi

- Then used SSH tunnelling to my home computer, my home internet has a dynamic IP address, so I had code running on the Raspberry Pi which was able to either e-mail me with the latest IP address, or upload it to a secure location on a website host I had available

- I would then SSH into the Raspberry Pi, I used Windows in this case, so setting up the tunnel and forwarding with Bitvise is relatively straightforward and I can also easily setup X11Forwarding if needed.

- Use WakeOnLAN from the Raspberry Pi to wake up my home computer, that way it didn't need to be turned on all of the time, but WoL setup for its ethernet in the BIOS and Operating System

- Remote desktop or VNC into my home computer

This meant that:

- My connection between the client and home was encrypted with SSH

- While not ideal (SSH being a TCP connection rather than speedier UDP connection) it worked very well

- I always knew what details to connect to my home PC was because the Pi kept the IP address up to date

- I could turn on and off my home PC at will and save power/energy without having to keep it turned on, but keep the Raspberry Pi turned on for less energy use

The downfalls of remote connection like this, is that it isn't best suited for 'remote gaming' or 'remote media playback'. Using remote desktop software performs static image snapshots, and so if you're wanting to do remote gaming/desktop you might instead want to consider using Steam Link or a similar service (incidentally you can do desktop control/streaming with Steam Link, but you have less Wake on LAN support and similar).

I can see why you'd want to remote desktop like this, legal wise you may have software that you want to access which you only have the license for on the remote system (though some software doesn't like you doing this, but it's usually based on one user rather than how it was accessed) and buying a different computer or cut down portable laptop may not be suitable or comparable.

Gamer said:

Who has tried this?

I've done similar.

Gamer said:

Any advice?

You have security issues on your hands with this.

You'll have to open up your home network to the global internet one way or another, and that has problems. People 'port scan' for the ability to connect to remote desktop opportunities, or SSH servers, VPN ports, etc.

If you're wanting to do this, you'll have to consider:

- What can/will you do to prevent unauthorised access?

- Can you afford keeping electronics online 24/7 to facilitate what you're doing?

The way I had it setup was this:

- Raspberry Pi running on my local home network with an OpenSSH server, with fail2ban to block any repeated hacking attempts

- Using my router, setup port forwarding with a non-typical port (22 is typical for SSH) to the Raspberry Pi

- Then used SSH tunnelling to my home computer, my home internet has a dynamic IP address, so I had code running on the Raspberry Pi which was able to either e-mail me with the latest IP address, or upload it to a secure location on a website host I had available

- I would then SSH into the Raspberry Pi, I used Windows in this case, so setting up the tunnel and forwarding with Bitvise is relatively straightforward and I can also easily setup X11Forwarding if needed.

- Use WakeOnLAN from the Raspberry Pi to wake up my home computer, that way it didn't need to be turned on all of the time, but WoL setup for its ethernet in the BIOS and Operating System

- Remote desktop or VNC into my home computer

This meant that:

- My connection between the client and home was encrypted with SSH

- While not ideal (SSH being a TCP connection rather than speedier UDP connection) it worked very well

- I always knew what details to connect to my home PC was because the Pi kept the IP address up to date

- I could turn on and off my home PC at will and save power/energy without having to keep it turned on, but keep the Raspberry Pi turned on for less energy use

The downfalls of remote connection like this, is that it isn't best suited for 'remote gaming' or 'remote media playback'. Using remote desktop software performs static image snapshots, and so if you're wanting to do remote gaming/desktop you might instead want to consider using Steam Link or a similar service (incidentally you can do desktop control/streaming with Steam Link, but you have less Wake on LAN support and similar).

I can see why you'd want to remote desktop like this, legal wise you may have software that you want to access which you only have the license for on the remote system (though some software doesn't like you doing this, but it's usually based on one user rather than how it was accessed) and buying a different computer or cut down portable laptop may not be suitable or comparable.

I have a variation of this ... in my case, I needed to also pay for a VPS because the home machine is behind a double-NAT (i.e. carrier grade NAT + router NAT). If you're behind just one NAT, port forwarding will work, but being behind two is pretty much game-over.

As a result, I have a Pi (or equivalent) maintaining a Wiregard tunnel (UDP ftw) to my VPS which is the "lucky" endpoint with a static IPv4. I can then connect to the VPS from my client and access the network as normal at home (subject to how one writes their iptables firewalls). I do have the SSH tunnel and autossh as a backup.

I've got WOL set-up, so the machine at home often sleeps (so can be woken quickly by WOL). But such a set-up has many hoops ... and takes much work to get working the way you want. Sometimes, you just meet networks that are firewalled and won't allow you to connect to non-standard ports, so it may pay to also use a different VPN server that can also handle that.

Your servers will get probed, brute-forced on the regular. Software bugs can also happen. Keeping everything up-to-date is vital.

- Gough