• Technology

Information is power, and you can work even without the infrastructure of a large office. Here’s how you can connect to your home office and retrieve files even while traveling.

Cutting communications costs for a business from home or a small office is quite a challenge. You might have to commute to a client’s location in your own city or even a different country, and be able to access all your files on your PC at home. Large offices usually have some sort of virtual network access, so will you be at a disadvantage?

It would be impractical to carry all your data with you as you’ll end up with duplicate files, and any loss or theft of your laptop or storage devices could severely harm your business. E-mail and online storage services are options, but you might not know what you need till you need it!

Being able to access files on your office or home computer from a remote location can save you a lot of time and trouble. One way to do this is to have an FTP file server running and connected to the Internet via a live IP address. This solution is expensive and requires you to share every possible file in a location that you can access from outside.

VPN (Virtual Private Networking) software and remote desktop service applications can be far cheaper than deploying a dedicated server needed for a short period of time. RealVNC, TightVNC and Ultra VNC are some of the most popular programs other than Windows’ built-in Remote Desktop Sharing tool that you can use to gain access to your computer over the Internet. Even with the software, in most cases this solution also needs a live dedicated IP address linked to your broadband connection. Most ordinary DSL connections charge extra for this facility. So what do you do?

You can still get around this limitation and get a temporary live IP for free using a program called Hamachi. This is an online service which requires you to install a utility and register online. The software then links your machine to their servers via the Internet and provides a virtual networking service with the Hamachi network group.

Each registered user is given a unique IP address which is completely open or live to all Hamachi users online (but hidden from each other). This IP address is highlighted in the Hamachi utility and needs to be used by whoever is in the remote location and needs to connect to your network.

Once done, you can then use any third party VNC application including all the ones mentioned earlier, to log in to your computer as usual and use it and its contents for whatever purpose you like. Log on to the website www.hamachi.com, download the software, install it on both your computers (the stationary one and the laptop you’re traveling with) and register them once. Then specify a name for each machine over the Hamachi network.

Tags:
Communication, cutting cost, home office