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Some work-related resources are IP-restricted, specifically the databases upon which I develop most of my applications. This is kind of annoying, as I have to remote-desktop into my machine if I want to work remotely...which is quite agonizing. Is there some way that I could get around this, and assign myself my own IP from home?

We need to use VPN to connect to work, which gives us an internal IP. Along this line of thinking, can I then set up a VPN on my own machine and have it assign the machine's IP?

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please discuss such matters with your IT department, tunneling firewalls or circumventing corporate security policies may get you fired. – Molly7244 Dec 10 '09 at 20:37
Already done that. Boss says it's fine, but doesn't know how to do what I want, either. – confuzzled Dec 10 '09 at 20:44
what vpn software are you using because i can set my ip address when connecting to my works vpn. i usualy set it to my computer's IP address and before i leave i shutdown my computer to free my ip address. when i get in the vpn service allows for user configuard ip address.. if you do have that option you can right click on your vpn virtual adator and go to properties then click on networking TCP/IPv4 after highlighting the version 4 protocol click properties there you can change your ip address for your vpn connection...good luck!! – mike Dec 11 '09 at 7:08

4 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

Instead of spoofing, you could 'tunnel' or 'proxy' your requests. One way of doing this is with SSH. In order to do this, you'd need to do the following steps:

  1. Install a SSH server (eg copSSH) on your Work PC
  2. Install a SSH client (eg putty) on your Home PC
  3. Connect your VPN between your Home PC and your Work network
  4. Make SSH connection from Home PC to Work PC
    • Set up a 'Local' tunnel, source port: <DB_PORT>, destination: <DB_IP>:<DB_PORT>
  5. Run your DB administration tool on your Home PC, enter as the hostname for the database as localhost

A quick google turned up this tutorial...not sure how accurate it is, since I've never set up a SSH server on windows before, but it looks simple enough.

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up vote 1 down vote

well, if you boss doesn't mind tunnelling the firewall or NAT router, use Teamviewer. install and run the host server as a service on your work machine (create a strong password!), use TeamViewer portable to access this computer from anywhere.

Teamviewer is free for personal use.

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"Teamview is free for personal use", I think connecting to your company's server and doing work from home would count as commercial use. But that's beside the point...he already said he doesn't want to do remote desktop, and I doubt Teamviewer is any faster than RDP. – davr Dec 17 '09 at 2:43
there is more to Teamviewer than meets the eye (remote desktop), you can also use it for remote access to unattended computers, file transfer, etc. and yes, Teamviewer is free for personal use. if you want to use it commercially, you'll have to pay. anything wrong with that? :) – Molly7244 Dec 17 '09 at 3:03
up vote 0 down vote

@Molly makes a good point about IT/network security policies, but given that you have only the company's best interests in mind:

I, for one, am not entirely clear on which PC you want to access from where...

  • Your home PC while sitting at your work PC,
  • Your work PC while sitting at your home PC, or
  • Your database server (at work) while sitting at your home PC.

All three are very possible (disregarding the potential for explicit routing restrictions from your IT department). You mention that IT already has a VPN server running, so presumably your home PC is running a VPN client and is already connected to your corporate network.

If you simply want to use your development tools on your home PC to work on the database at work (rather than remoting into your work PC; I prefer this too), you should already be able to do so if you know the database server's IP address.

(But, I'll be the first to admit that I may have misunderstood your objective.)

EDIT: Adding my reply-comment to the Answer itself:

So, if I understand correctly you want to know your local (VPN) IP address so you can add it to the list of IPs with access to the DB? If that's the case (and you're in Windows) you can do ipconfig in a CMD window to see your locally-assigned IP addresses. Find the one for the VPN's virtual adapter.

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#3 is what I'm after. The VPN from work only lets me into the network. After that, the database has additional IP restrictions on top of that (myself and a few other developers). It's really just a convenience thing, since I really, really hate RDP. So I was wondering if there was a way to, after VPNing into the network, then get my machine's specific IP...allowing me DB access. – confuzzled Dec 10 '09 at 20:54
So, if I understand correctly you want to know your local (VPN) IP address so you can add it to the list of IPs with access to the DB? If that's the case (and you're in Windows) you can do ipconfig in a CMD window to see your locally-assigned IP addresses. Find the one for the VPN's virtual adapter. – JMD Dec 10 '09 at 21:00
No, I actually want to spoof my IP. For example, when I log into the local VPN, I get an IP, lets say 111.22.333.44. That is randomly assigned. Now I'm in the network, which is great (I can now access network resources). Now I want to set my IP to my work machine's IP. I read somewhere that this can be accomplished by using another VPN, hosted off my machine...but I've no clue what that implies. Is this clear? Note: I cannot add IPs to the DB. Nor assign a specific IP from the master VPN. – confuzzled Dec 10 '09 at 23:01
OK, now it's clear what your trying to accomplish, although I don't have a solution for you. But someone else might, now that we have the objective spelled out. – JMD Dec 10 '09 at 23:48
up vote 0 down vote

Sounds like the easiest method would be to set the IP address you receive from the VPN server (ideally this will be outside the range normally given out) then add that IP to the "allowed ip's" for the services you need to access.

Depending on the VPN type you are using will determine your ability to do this.

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