Hi,

Background: I am currently working behind a firewall that refuses all incoming connections and after much "debate" with the sys admin, he has allowed me to add a gateway to let me connect to my machines.

Problem: I have to find some sort of server/gateway based on linux that would allow me to connect to it and make it seem as if I was on my department's internal network. SSH or Telnet would not work in this case because I would need to be able to RDP to the windows machines if I needed to (To be more precise, I need to look like I'm actually inside the network with an internal IP and all). So basically, I am looking for a solution that would pretty much repackage everything coming in and out and that is secure. I have heard from some people that this can be done using PPPoE but all the tutorials I have seen include some sort of modem and I've been told that it is not all that secure.

Any ideas?

--M.D.

i dont see why SSH wouldnt work for you. that is what i use. when establishing the ssh connection i setup port forwards so that i can connect using rdp to XP/2003 for management. then when i want to remote desktop to an xp or 2003 OS i use rdesktop and point it to my port foward for whatever machine i want to connect to.

or you may look into setting up a VPN which may be more suited for you

if you are using a windows machine to connect RDP then use putty and you can specify all your forwards in putty's configuration and save it.

if using XP machine to connect to your linux gateway you will need to copy the mstsc files to a diff dir and set 98 compat mode for mstsc.exe, then you would use the 98 compat mode mstsc to connect to localhost:900x and it will forward to the machine behind the firewall through your ssh connection

hope this helps...