Archive for May, 2005

It worked. I ended up at the office today without a file I had to have. I needed a syllabus from last year, and it wasn’t on my laptop. Actually, the file was on my laptop, but I left the laptop at home today because I just suppose to be in meetings.

EFTP did the trick. I used a lab computer and downloaded the free client (free is nice). Sixty seconds later I was downloading my file.

The trick was using port 21 on the firewall. I tried it with a different port (thinking it would confuse the network scanners looking for an FTP server). Once I opened up port 21, everything worked as it was suppose to. Now I just check the logs daily to make sure there isn’t anything “funny” going on.

I have a new computer dilemma. A couple of months ago I did something I hadn’t done in years. I bought a new computer. I do this about once every six or seven years. I don’t want you think I use the same computer for more than five years. I don’t. In fact, I usually get a new computer every year, but it’s always a laptop. This time I got a desktop.

I still have a nice laptop that I tote to the office everything. Here’s the problem. I work at home in the evening (on the desktop). Then I take the laptop to the office. I have a 512MB USB drive that will hold everything I do in a evening, but I always end up at the office without that one file I really need.

So I’m looking for a secure way of getting back to my home computer (security is very important… must be encrypted) from outside the firewall. It also has to be easy to use.

I have a cable modem with an IP address that’s mapped to a domain name (using DYNDNS.ORG). Getting home is not the problem. Once I’m here, I have to get through the firewall which already has HTTP and HTTPS mapped to my web server and secure mail server, respectively.

FTP is no good (not encrypted). I’m looking at encrypted FTP, but I need something that is FREE. I found EFTP, but it wants to use some dynamic ports that my firewall doesn’t seem to want to automatically open.

I’m still playing around with it.