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    Best way to provide remote access for home office?

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    • scottalanmillerS
      scottalanmiller
      last edited by

      OpenVPN is free, too, but more complicated for no reason compared to ZeroTier.

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      • S
        Scott Banned
        last edited by

        Thank you. I will look into ZeroTier.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • scottalanmillerS
          scottalanmiller @Scott
          last edited by

          @Scott said in Best way to provide remote access for home office?:

          Stationary.

          Dad would like to simply access the desktop in son's office from his home.

          Then you could skip the ZeroTier path and just expose RDP, but limit it to the IP range of reasonable possibility from the ISP. But ZeroTier is so easy, why not add it?

          But direct RDP is fine, too, with reasonable precations (good passwords, IP limiting, etc.)

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          • scottalanmillerS
            scottalanmiller
            last edited by

            If you ignore your "without replacing gear" stipulation, of course having any business routers would work, too and provide point to point VPN. But no need for that. But if you wanted to do that... Ubiquiti EdgeRouters or USG are cheap and work great.

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            • S
              Scott Banned
              last edited by

              Well, I barely understand Zero Tier, so I am not going to be attempting to explain it much less run it at a guy's home office and have his 75+ year old dad use it.

              JaredBuschJ scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • JaredBuschJ
                JaredBusch @Scott
                last edited by

                @Scott said in Best way to provide remote access for home office?:

                Well, I barely understand Zero Tier, so I am not going to be attempting to explain it much less run it at a guy's home office and have his 75+ year old dad use it.

                What do you not understand? you install it on both computers and both computers get a second IP address and you remote from one to the other. you’re done

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                • scottalanmillerS
                  scottalanmiller @Scott
                  last edited by

                  @Scott said in Best way to provide remote access for home office?:

                  Well, I barely understand Zero Tier, so I am not going to be attempting to explain it much less run it at a guy's home office and have his 75+ year old dad use it.

                  It's the simplest, most straightforward possible option. Everything else is going to be way harder.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • ObsolesceO
                    Obsolesce @Scott
                    last edited by Obsolesce

                    @Scott said in Best way to provide remote access for home office?:

                    I have a client whose dad helps him with the books in his home office once a week. They would like to set up remote access for the one day a week he does this so dad does not have to drive 2-3 hours.

                    Log Me In and TeamViewer seem a little pricey to them for something used a few hours once a week.

                    Are there any recommended similar remote access options that do not require replacing routers, static IPs and the like?

                    Thanks.

                    If they are using Windows 10, the built in Quick Assist works awesome. I used it to help my dad across the country a few times, zero issues, full control.

                    It literally does not get any easier than this.

                    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026516/windows-use-remote-assistance-to-let-someone-fix-your-pc

                    Screenshot_20190315-070602_Chrome.jpg

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                    • Emad RE
                      Emad R @Scott
                      last edited by

                      @Scott

                      AnyDesk

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • S
                        Scott Banned
                        last edited by

                        Maybe I should not have read too far into moons and the nodes orbiting them...

                        I am connected.

                        Any reason to change any defaults?

                        It matter if I setup my user and his dad on this network, or it make sense to create their own?

                        Thank you all.

                        JaredBuschJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • D
                          dyasny
                          last edited by

                          Thanks for the zeroteer link, haven't heard of it before.

                          What I do is use sshuttle. It basically does exactly the same thing as a VPN, but through an SSH tunnel. I use Linux everywhere, so it's easy, but afaik, OpenSSH can be installed on Windows these days as well.

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                          • K
                            krisleslie
                            last edited by

                            I use anydesk, basically same feature set as TeamViewer. Why not move to Quickbooks Online (sounds like he has QB 🐷 )

                            https://anydesk.com/en/

                            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • scottalanmillerS
                              scottalanmiller @krisleslie
                              last edited by

                              @krisleslie said in Best way to provide remote access for home office?:

                              I use anydesk, basically same feature set as TeamViewer. Why not move to Quickbooks Online (sounds like he has QB )

                              QB Online isn't QB. It's Intuit, but a different, much lesser, product. It's fine, if it fits your need. But in theory, if you use real QB you already do so only because you have to. If QB Online works for you, you would already have been on Xero or Wave or something else better

                              Basically, no proper QB user can ever consider QB Online.

                              K 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • K
                                krisleslie @scottalanmiller
                                last edited by

                                @scottalanmiller it's not 100% equivalent, but it's better in some cases. The only thing most people are losing (which can be created) is reports. Support can help rebuild reports with you on the phone. Easy peasy. One less thing to troubleshoot in the grand scheme of things. QB on a desktop sucks so bad they don't even know why it breaks at times! For the average small business, Quick Books has been the goto app for years and decades. So I totally agree with going to Xero, Wave, and other cloud-first initiatives but getting that wrapped around anyone short of being a millennial is a tough battle. I see very little benefit of a non-web-based version. In this day and age, the api's of those web-based apps work so much for you especially when you have other types of PSA's in place that you want to use. Trying to tie in Quick Books on the desktop to something web-based cost more and is a bit more time-consuming and limited.

                                scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • K
                                  krisleslie
                                  last edited by

                                  Like in the case of us, as a non-profit it's a bit of a step-down but that's only due to Intuit. Again, feature for feature, I still have yet to see anything short of reports being the factor that was missing. There isn't a technical limitation and it's faster to iterate the online version than desktop by a big margin. But when we look at Quickbooks for the desktop, the limitations you have are often there and never go away (since the 90's)!

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                                  • scottalanmillerS
                                    scottalanmiller @krisleslie
                                    last edited by

                                    @krisleslie said in Best way to provide remote access for home office?:

                                    @scottalanmiller it's not 100% equivalent, but it's better in some cases. The only thing most people are losing (which can be created) is reports. Support can help rebuild reports with you on the phone. Easy peasy. One less thing to troubleshoot in the grand scheme of things. QB on a desktop sucks so bad they don't even know why it breaks at times! For the average small business, Quick Books has been the goto app for years and decades. So I totally agree with going to Xero, Wave, and other cloud-first initiatives but getting that wrapped around anyone short of being a millennial is a tough battle. I see very little benefit of a non-web-based version. In this day and age, the api's of those web-based apps work so much for you especially when you have other types of PSA's in place that you want to use. Trying to tie in Quick Books on the desktop to something web-based cost more and is a bit more time-consuming and limited.

                                    When your books are used for forensics, Online doesn't cut it at all. There are all kinds of features lacking on the high end.

                                    K 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • K
                                      krisleslie @scottalanmiller
                                      last edited by

                                      @scottalanmiller if it where me, I'd suggest the poster just move to Xero. I played with it and it's definitely got better options for SMB's.

                                      Scott honestly, even at our company, WE don't use Quickbooks to it's potential and we have the enterprise version. It's like the same debate of people crying about using Microsoft Word vs Google Docs. 99% of my staff won't ever write a proper novel, properly structure a document or build it around standards. That 1% that does really only accounts for IT projects that literally require Word or certain features in docs we may get when receiving documents from our state or the government/partners. Very much cheaper and EASIER to just use Google, Quip, Zoho etc.

                                      scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • K
                                        krisleslie @scottalanmiller
                                        last edited by

                                        @scottalanmiller in a case like that, I've never had to deal with that from an audit perspective. Auditors never came and asked for that nor for the clients, we manage. I actually usually want them to go all forensic, just never happens. But I agree with you in that having it when not needed vs not having it and need it 🙂 I'll be bugging them about that and making suggestions for that online. Honestly from an online perspective, that's a small issue that can be fixed very easily since it's an audit trail. They have one in place probably just not up to the standards your talking about which means it's a big gap that can be fixed. I mean they are making $$$ off it why not add it?

                                        scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • scottalanmillerS
                                          scottalanmiller @krisleslie
                                          last edited by

                                          @krisleslie said in Best way to provide remote access for home office?:

                                          @scottalanmiller if it where me, I'd suggest the poster just move to Xero. I played with it and it's definitely got better options for SMB's.

                                          That's what we had to leave due to forensic needs. Xero and QB Online couldn't handle the kind of accounting required for court analysis.

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                                          • K
                                            krisleslie
                                            last edited by

                                            Scott is there anyone that could in the cloud?

                                            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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