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Occasionally I’d like to connect to my home computer from my work computer. Both run Yosemite.

I’d like to do this using Remote Desktop, as in I’d like to be able to run all programs on my home computer as if I was sitting behind it (view my Desktop, and access and run all my apps)

At work most outgoing connections are blocked. Can I get around this by using a paid VPN service whenever I want to connect to home? I have no experience with VPNs but do understand the concept and since I have admin rights on my machine I must be able to set one up.

Once the VPN is up and running I guess I can use any Remote Desktop app to connect to home?

Then the next question is that I probably need a fixed IP address or hostname at home, since I’m on a residential DSL connection that periodically changes IP. Would DynDNS help me with that? I see that Dyn also has a Remote Access product - would that let me see my desktop and run apps, or only access my files?

Can anyone confirm if this general overview is correct and possibly recommend a good VPN service and remote desktop app for this type of scenario?

I don't want to use iCloud!

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  • idk about VPN as I've never used one, but read through support.apple.com/en-us/HT204618 for Back to my Mac basics
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Mar 21, 2016 at 10:24
  • Back to Mac requires iCloud which I don't use.
    – stef
    Commented Mar 21, 2016 at 10:27
  • Then you ought to edit that into your question
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Mar 21, 2016 at 10:28

1 Answer 1

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I have personally used TeamViewer.

  • No need for a VPN or DDNS
  • Free for Personal Use
  • Works on Mac, Windows, Linux, Andrioid, etc.
  • Substantially faster than VNC

With a VPN, you run into the issue of it either being blocked by your company's firewall or if it is a SSL VPN, you either have to pay for the service or spend a lot of time and effort setting it up - it's quite complex and not something that is baked into consumer grade routers.

DDNS or Dynamic DNS can be done quite easily and it's fairly cheap, but it's not required.

I have found that TeamViewer performs much faster than VNC which is choppy and lags quite a bit over remote connections. It also dosen't have all the hassles associated with VPN connectivity and there is even a USB version that you can run without having to install (meaning you can put TeamViewer on a USB stick and run it from any computer with Internet)

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  • TeamViewer for Mac doesn't have the VPN option.
    – Stony
    Commented Oct 10, 2017 at 0:39
  • @Stony - read the very first bullet point.
    – Allan
    Commented Oct 10, 2017 at 0:42
  • Thanks, I know I can access the remote desktop by teamviewer, but I also want to have VPN. The case is as blow, the teamviewer is running in my office pc, and I want to access another linux server of the office from my home machine directly (Just use the local ssh client). How to do it? I install a proxy tool in my office pc, and open VPN channel between my home pc and office pc, and then in my local ssh client, I set proxy, so I can access the linux machine in my office.. if doesn't have VPN channel, how can I do it?
    – Stony
    Commented Oct 11, 2017 at 2:21
  • @Stony That's a totally different question and out of scope for this answer and even this site (should be on Server Fault). But as a quick answer - you could port forward SSH from your router/firewall directly to your Linux box, you could TeamView to your Mac. run Terminal, etc. There are a number of ways to set this up and it doesn't require a VPN
    – Allan
    Commented Oct 11, 2017 at 9:11

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