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I live in an apartment complex that manages my Internet. It looks like they have a router for the complex, and then I have a router in my apartment that covers my local network (an Airport Express) mainly because otherwise I can see every computer in the complex otherwise. I'd like to be able to access my server that I've got running from outside my home network, preferably with some type of authentication (that would work primarily on my iPhone). Do y'all have any ideas on how I can make this happen?

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The server is inside, read his question again. He's trying to access it FROM outside. – gparent Nov 15 '12 at 19:44
@gparent, sorry, i read "running from outside" – Manuel Faux Nov 15 '12 at 19:45
No need to be sorry, it wasn't immediately obvious to me either :) – gparent Nov 15 '12 at 19:47
1) Create a VPN to something outside your network from your server. 2) Create another VPN to that something outside your network from your iPhone. 3)??? 4)Profit! – Zoredache Nov 15 '12 at 19:56

closed as off topic by mdpc, longneck, RobM, Zoredache, EEAA Nov 15 '12 at 19:57

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2 Answers

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If the apartment complex's router is running NAT, then eithout the cooperation of your apartment complex, you won't be able to access the server directly.

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If the router of the complex uses NAT (which I guess it does according to the title of the question), the easiest way to accomplish your goal is to ask the operator of the router to configure a DNAT to your router. Then you have to configure another DNAT to your server.

As I'm afraid this is not possible, you can do it the other way round, to force the server to connect to any system in the Internet where you have access to and use this Internet server as a kind of "jumping-station". If you don't have such server, you can use a system like Jump Desktop or TeamViewer, even this is no recommendation to use any of these services.

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Yeah, the jumping station is what I'm thinking of - possibly using reverse SSH tunnels using an AWS micro server I had running for other purposes – Alex Nov 15 '12 at 19:54
Yes, your AWS solution sounds much better than the services I have mentioned since AWS is more private than those services. – Manuel Faux Nov 15 '12 at 19:55

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