What is everyone’s favorite method for accessing and supporting a remote network? I have a family member that lives on the other side of the continent and relies on me for technical support. I need to be able to remotely access their network and PC, but having doubts that my trusty VNC-over-SSH setup is still the best way to do it. Should I be looking at an overlay network? Or maybe a point-to-point VPN? My priorities are simplicity and security. Open to all feedback.
Both PCs are linux at either end. Firewalls are pfSense on one side and a basic consumer router on the other.
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Welcome!
I was in a similar situation with the parents. I used Tailscale to create an always on MESH VPN. I could remotely access my parents devices and set up automatic backups to my TrueNAS servers.
You only need one instance of Tailscale running on either end (pfSense, Windows, *nix, NAS, Apple TV, etc.) and advertise subnet routes (must be on different sub-nets) to allow you to access any IP based device on the remote network. Tailscale has a free tier up to 3 users/100 devices, no port forwarding, and will traverse any level of NAT, including CGNAT
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I use Tailscale for this, works very well. You can add their PC as a node to your own tailnet with your own account if you like, so it appears as just one of your own devices, but use the ACLs to block all access from their device to other devices on your tailnet (stop them accessing your services)
You could also connect with them like an external user.
Awesome, thanks. This is the direction I was thinking I needed to go, but I’m just starting to wrap my head around overlay networks. So I wasn’t sure if I was on the right track.
I use Tailscale daily. Great overlay network solution.