Proxy or VPN?

[Vini]

Im after running a proxy (i think) on my home pc which i can surf through from remote locations, would a proxy be the best way to go, and if so which proxy server software do you recommend?

Failing that would a VPN be any good? Kind of dont want to have to install a VPN client from locations thats all

[Mutley]

So, let me see if I understand:

You want to be able to surf the 'net via your home broadband connection, when you are located away from home (e.g. at work or wherever)...that right?

There are two ways of doing this that come to mind:

1. VNC. Install a VNCserver on your PC (realvnc, tightvnc, etc), open the relevant ports on your firewall, and away you go. Won't be amazingly fast, and will definately be quite insecure, unless you get one of the VNCs which provide some security.

2. OpenSSH. On Windows this would mean installing the cygwin openssh packages. This is quite a good guide, but there are others around (have a search in these forums) : http://pigtail.net/LRP/printsrv/cygwin-sshd.html. You can then use an SSH client where you are (there are freely available SSH clients on every platform) to create a SOCKS proxy locally through which you can tunnel http requests from your browser to your SSH Server on your PC, and hence out to the internet. Sounds more complicated than it is. We do this at my work, to get a proper external view of our company web sites when we need to check stuff is working properly.

Oh, and you could also use SSH to secure VNC as well (I do this as well at times).

Hope that helps - sounds more complicated than it really is!

Mut.

[Vini]

Got VNC running atm but its obviously slow because you're viewing the actual PC.

Im after a tunnel really. Will have a play.

[Moby-Dick]

logmein.com is faster then VNC

as far as a proxy goes - have a look at CGIProxy , but it doesn't work for 100% of sites.