Safest way of accessing a home computer from outside?

[James Wilkinson]

Aaron Konstam wrote:
> There is something wrong with just saying use ssh. One assumes that the
> home machines are masqueraded behind a router.

William Hooper replied:
> Router or no router, it doesn't matter.  You just need to open a port for
> SSH in the firewall if there is no router.  If there is a router, you just
> need to configure one port to forward to your SSH server.

Aaron had also written:
> It seems to me that one must
> configure that all packets arriving at the router address be routed to a
> particular home machine address.

William asked: 
> Why?  SSH only needs one port.

Aaron said: 
> Just bad editing on my part. I meant to say ... all ssh packets ...

That's not true either. You can set up SSH to listen on any port you
care to choose (assuming that it's not already in use). So you can set
up different ports for each PC you want to access.

On many home routers, you can also forward from one public port on the
router to a different port on a computer on the local network.
Personally, I find it easier not to bother, at least with SSH -- keep
the port numbers consistent throughout, then you've got one less
variable to worry about.

Hope this helps,

James.

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