Takeaway: Deb Shinder explains how you can use a VPN to connect your Android smartphone to your home or work network.
You know the old saying: “You can’t take it with you.” Well, you can, but often you don’t. When you’re out on the road with nothing but your phone and desperately need access to a document that’s stored on your computer at home or at work, what do you do? Because a modern smartphone is really just a small computer, you can securely connect to your home LAN or company network over a VPN connection. Let’s take a look at how you can do this with popular Android phones.
You know the old saying: “You can’t take it with you.” Well, you can, but often you don’t. When you’re out on the road with nothing but your phone and desperately need access to a document that’s stored on your computer at home or at work, what do you do? Because a modern smartphone is really just a small computer, you can securely connect to your home LAN or company network over a VPN connection. Let’s take a look at how you can do this with popular Android phones.
On the server side
First, in order to use virtual private networking, you need a VPN server configured on the network to which you want to connect. Most business networks that allow remote access will have a VPN server set up. At home, you can set up your desktop or laptop computer to be a VPN server (of course, you’ll need to leave it on when you’re gone so you can connect to it). The steps for doing that depend on what desktop operating system you’re using. Here are links to help you with that task:
- Setting up incoming VPN connection in Windows 7
- Configuring Linux VPNs
- Enable VPN server in OS X for remote access
An important consideration is what VPN protocols are used by your VPN server. Most common are PPTP, L2TP, IPsec, SSTP and SSL. Your VPN client software on your phone will need support the protocol(s) used by your VPN server.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
