Secure entry into remote systems

[shrek-m at gmx.de]

Edward wrote:

> However, with a few customers more than 1.5 hours drive away, I need 
> to look at remote administration. Especially for simply adding few 
> users to a spamassassin white list or the like, which really only are 
> 10 minute jobs.
>
> So, I was thinking about setting up dyndns or no-ip addresses for 
> these servers, then opening up the firewall for either ssh or VPN. 
> None of my customers have a static internet address.
>
> I've used ssh locally before, and that is really simple to set up, but 
> because of the open hole I'll be creating my question is really: 
> Should I be learning about setting up VPN tunnels into their systems 
> instead? 


i do these jobs with:

dyndns_provider
firewall:not_22 --> ssh-server:22
ssh, sftp, scp


works great


if you need  X11Forwarding,
this can be really slow,
escpecially rdesktop.


the _few_ situations i need
  rdesktop/w2k-terminal-server
  Xnest,...
  VNC, timbuktu, pcanywhere, ...

i forward the needed port(s) on the firewall to the real-server for the 
short-time and close it afterwards,
you will see great perfomance-differences.


-- 
shrek-m