Remote connection, mac to mac

Question

I have had a look and can't seem to find anything convincing - we have a few macs at work, and we each have a mac at home - all we want to be able connect from home, to our mac at work and do work....
does the official apple remote software cover this, as it seems more networking focused
or has anyone any other experiences with software they would like to share?
many thanks in advance

Answer 1

The key will be how work interfaces to the internet.
If you have a corporate firewall, and no control over that firewall, then it gets complicated.
If you have a small office and router similar to a home router, then you can configure that router to allow specific ports from the internet to be be routed to specific Macs at work.
But before going down that path, here are the easy to the more complex ways to connect to your Macs at work.
If your work router allows it, you could use Apple MobileMe subscriptions and its Back-to-My-Mac feature. This depends on the router supporting Universal Plug and Play features, but if it does, then Back-to-My-Mac will give screen sharing, and file sharing between home and your Macs.
LogMeIn.com and TeamViewer.com can generally work, even across corportate firewalls. They both provide screen sharing. TeamViewer.com includes file copy, and LogMeIn.com (paid version) also includes file transfer. There is also GoToMyPC.com.
If you can configure your work router to Port Forward internet ports to specific ports on your work Macs, then you can roll your own. This would consist of forwarding a unique internet port for each work Mac to each Mac's port 5900 (the VNC port), and a separate set of unique internet ports to each Mac's port 548 (the AFP file sharing port). For examle:
Internet port 5911 to Mac 1's 5900
Interent port 5912 to Mac 2's 5900
Internet port 5913 to Mac 3's 5900
Internet port 11548 to Mac 1's 548
Internet port 12548 to Mac 2's 548
Internet port 13548 to Mac 3's 548
Of course Screen Sharing and File Sharing would need to be enabled on the work Mac's.
Now when you want screen share with work Mac 1, at home you would use Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server -> vnc://work.router.address:5911
And when you wanted to do file sharing with work Mac 2, at home you would use Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server -> afp://work.router.address:12548
If your work.router.address does not have its own domain name, then you can get a free No-IP.com or DynDNS.org dynamic DNS name, which will allow you to have a fixed name you connect to, and one of the Macs at work run the dynamic DNS updater that keeps the name up to date when your work ISP changing the IP address.
The next level of complexity, is to have a VPN into work. If work already has a VPN that you can use, this would actually simplify things a little, as the VPN software already gets you into the work network, and you can just ignore my router configuration suggestions. Then you just use the Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server -> vnc://address.of.mac.inside.VPN and afp://address.of.mac.inside.VPN
If you do not have a VPN, then setting one up is beyond my knowledge, and I'm sure a bit more complex. It might also requires some dedicated hardware or Mac to do the VPN server duties.
Another more complex approach which gives the security of a VPN, with a different set of complexities would be using ssh tunnels. This is alternative to opening separate ports for VNC and AFP. Instead you would open unique ports for ssh (System Preferences -> Sharing -> Remote Login).
Internet port 21022 to Mac 1's port 22
Internet port 22022 to Mac 2's port 22
Interent port 23022 to Mac 3's port 22
Now from a terminal, or an ssh GUI interface, establish tunnels for screen sharing and file sharing. The following would be the terminal command issued from the Home Mac.:
ssh -p 23022
-L 5913:localhost:5900
-L 13548:localhost:548
username@ work.router.address
Now from the home Mac use Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server -> vnc://localhost:5913 and afp://localhost:13548