Quote:
Originally Posted by Grey Ghost
VPN?
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Oh god no. VPN's are way overkill for something like this (usually) but certainly one could use a VPN. Based on knowing what the OP does for a living (alarm system stuff) I'm thinking it is for remote access to either a video stream or alarm data. This could probably be done easily by forwarding one or more ports to the WAN.
Lets's say their router is 192.168.100.1 on the LAN side, and on the LAN side there is a web server at address 192.168.100.6. and from the router the outside (WAN) IP is 2.3.4.5. Port forward port 80 from 192.168.100.6 to 2.3.4.5. From anywhere on the web I can ping 2.3.4.5. For instance, you can ping 173.194.115.2 from a cmd prompt by typing "ping 173.194.115.2" or also by typing "ping google.com" (they are the same.) So assuming you can ping 2.3.4.5, they can port forward port 80 and then from any computer with an internet connection, open a browser and type for the URL "http://2.3.4.5" and if there is a web server listening on the computer at 192.168.100.6 on their LAN it will open up whatever web page that server has.
VPN's are credential-based connections where the remote client has to enter a username/password for authentication. Very nice and all, but with port forwarding you are essentially allowing any and all connections that that computer over a specific port (or ports) and the only security possible is to limit those remote connections only from specific IP addresses or MAC's.
Also usually VPN's are made to a domain, not a simple peer-to-peer network like most of us have at home.