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I live in university housing, but I work offsite. I want to be able to remote into my computer during the day, but the university has a firewall built into their routers or whatever that blocks absolutely all incoming connections. I need to mention also that I cannot install programs onto my work computer, but it has remote desktop on it which is why I need to use it instead of VNC or something. Any help is greatly appreciated!

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-1 Asking us how to help you bypass policies set by other admins. Why don't you go ask your system admin how you can get through the firewall. The firewall rules are there for a reason. – Zoredache Nov 3 '09 at 19:00
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+1 Sysadmins are inclined to implement across the board sucurity measures without any regard to users needs. Simply because it is easier and can be justified by waving the 'evil internet' flag. – Martin Nov 3 '09 at 19:18
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Todd, I feel for ya' man, but -1 for trying to work around the IT department. =) We're not evil overlords that like making your day harder than it had to be (most of us, anyway), but they're are a lot of issues involved with adding new access possibilities to the network that they may not be able to handle at the moment. Just ask them first and see if you can work something out. – WesleyDavid Nov 3 '09 at 19:43
To be honest, some of us are evil overlords. But that's not the point. As a general rule it is inadvisable to ask admins how to circumvent restrictions imposed by others of our species. We wouldn't want your admin helping someone to circumvent restrictions we impose. – John Gardeniers Nov 3 '09 at 20:53
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closed as off topic by Zoredache, MikeyB, womble, John Gardeniers, Izzy Nov 3 '09 at 21:44

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6 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

You could try a service like Hamachi or LogMeIn to do this if you do not have access to your firewall configuration.

In your specific case I would suggest LogMeIn at home and then access it via the website at work. Free for home use.

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up vote 2 down vote

Before trying to hack something together and undermine your IT department, try and talk with them about your needs. Maybe get a representative such as a professor that can vouch for the benefit of you being able to access your machine from work (I'm assuming that you're a student and not faculty). SysAdmins have an unfortunate reputation for being surly and cold to users' needs, but you may be able to get them to work with you in some way.

Going around them is sure to cause more issues in the long run and possibly, depending on your university's policies, some kind of punitive action. If not official punishment, at the least it will cause "interpersonal issues" that might just be worse than any official punishment. Don't think that the admins won't notice something going on eventually.

Maybe they simply don't know that the need for remote access like this exists among the student body and if more people requested it to their department leaders / professors something could be worked out.

EDIT: As an addendum, IMO you'd want to talk to the IT manager / department head and not one of the SysAdmins themselves. Managers / Directors and etc. are more inclined to be interested in customer needs and considering changes. This is all in my experience, of course. Your mileage may vary.

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+1 for actually trying to solve the problem -- might benefit more than just the OP. – pboin Nov 3 '09 at 19:48
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up vote 1 down vote

You need to set up a reverse tunnel with port forwarding out to your machine at home from work and then traverse it backwards to get into the machine via rdp.

Look into plink/putty ssh and google for ssh reverse tunnel, which should put you in the right direction. At the very least you need the ssh software on that work machine, and in all likelihood you can get someone to install it for you since its necessary to access a great many third parties. If not you may be out of luck unless you get particularly nefarious.

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up vote 0 down vote

I think opening a logmein account, and installing the free version of the client on both your home and work computers would be the easiest. This is also assuming you have admin rights on your work machine to be able to install software.

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There is no need for him to install on his work machine. – sparks Nov 3 '09 at 19:45
I know, that would be for him to get to his home PC, if he so desired. – DanBig Nov 3 '09 at 19:48
You mean to his work pc, he'll be able to go home from work with no install, but not to work from home. – sparks Nov 3 '09 at 20:00
i meant by installing it in both locations, he would be able to access one from the other. – DanBig Nov 3 '09 at 20:05
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up vote 0 down vote

LogMeIn would work. Another option would be Windows Live Mesh - it has Remote Desktop built in.

Edit: nevermind, didn't see that you couldn't install apps on your work machine.

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up vote 0 down vote

You can forward RDP port using SSH: download Putty SSH client, connect it to a remote server, and setup a static tunnel :)

This can be done either from the server or from another host in the same network. The only thing you'll need is a *nix server to which you can connect with ssh.

Here's how to forward RDP port 3389:

putty.exe -R3389:localhost:3389 user-name@server-name.domain
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