How to set up a VPN to my home

Start with a google search for *enable VPN site:apple.com* and review the hits.

Stuart, I'm afraid your model of router doesn't support vpn server capability in native firmware by Netgear. However you can 'reflash' your router using the OpenWRT project.

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start#netgear

This will give you vpn dial-in capability.. If you dont want to do that, then your options are somewhat limited to the following.

1. Buy a new router which supports VPN dial-in *Draytek Models do*
2. Build a separate VPN server and put it behind your Netgear router and setup Port forwarding (I would suggest an OpenVPN based on since they're the most straight forward to use on a Mac).

If you need any help doing this, I can assist, the above assumes some intermediate networking knowledge and having been through this kind of thing myself a good few times, I can help.

Regards
dan

Stuart, HI

Yes. a vpn client connection wizard, to connect to a VPN server, but not a self contained VPN server on the router it self to terminate a VPN connection from your mac 🙂 I noticed this feature in Netgear and Linksys routers about three years ago whilst doing remote support for people..

Dan

I don't have the product, but there is at least one commercialware product, called iVPN, that is supposed to provide a GUI interface into the VPN daemon built into the bowels of the unix stuff on your computer. That would set up a VPN server, to which you could port forward the necessary ports for VPN service in your router. Go to macupdate.com or versiontracker.com or similar and do a search on iVPN or just VPN.

Also, I wouldn't use FTP over the internet. It is not encrypted, including password. Enable remote login in your computer (that is ssh), port forward port 22 in the router to the computer. Then use sftp (commands are the same as ftp but it is encrypted with ssh). There are GUI programs available for the remote client to make sftp connections. That would at least get you to the one computer, although not the home network at large like you could with a VPN.

You should get a free host name from noip.com or dyndns.com or similar. Install their dynamic DNS updater application on the VPN server or ssh/sftp server computer. Actually, some routers have built-in support for dynamic DNS services like dyndns.com so you wouldn't have to install a dynamic DNS updater. Then you don't need to worry about what IP address to use.

Just to clear things up, do you have a computer that sits off of the router at home while you are away and using your macbook pro? If not, then iVPN will not work for you since the remote end cannot be a server. The same goes for setting up your computer for sftp. If the NAS has an sftp function, then you could configure the router to forward port 22 to the NAS IP address. Once that was done you could access it from on the road by using an sftp client to connect to your public ip address (the one that your cable/dsl modem is assigned)