[lug] Listening services and NAT on both ends

[Landon Cox]

LogMeIn Hamachi does this.   It's not OSS and has a light monthly service charge for commercial use and 100% free for non-commercial use.   It has easy to install clients which work well on Windows, Mac, and Linux:

https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi2/

I've used this for both the NAT<->NAT case as well as similar NAT<->cellular client...mainly used ssh machine-to-machine over it, but there was nothing special to do - should work with any protocol.  In the cellular case, the cell companies clearly don't want you to host any kind of service on a cell connected system, but for lots of applications, it's valid and critical to do so.  This solution gets around the problem of cell providers blocking inbound ports particularly.

Hamachi's probably the simplest, fastest to setup VPN solution I've seen out there.  Would be interested to hear others experiences with similar solutions,

Landon

On Jan 18, 2011, at 9:07 AM, Chris Riddoch wrote:

> Here's a scenario: two users across the internet from each other would
> like to provide each other access to their systems - perhaps SSH, or
> HTTP, but the specific service doesn't really matter.  Both are behind
> NAT.
> 
> If one user has access to the system doing the NAT, they can set up a
> port forwarding rule to direct appropriate ports to the system
> providing the service.  This isn't even that hard anymore.
> 
> But suppose both users are on laptops at coffee shops, where neither
> has access to set up port forwarding rules, and neither has a hosted
> server someplace else they could both connect through - they're
> nontechnical users, with no need for such a server in general.
> 
> For most cases of chat services or VoIP, they'll both be connecting
> through some outside server.  But suppose it were a service that's not
> designed for use with intermediaries, like SSH or VNC?  Something
> where you'd ordinarily set up a port forward, if you had permission to
> do so?
> 
> Someone asked me about a specific case of this problem the other day,
> and honestly, I'm stumped.  What would you suggest?
> 
> -- 
> Chris Riddoch
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