SG Broadband Community

I am about to move into a house w/ a cable modem, Linksys Wireless WRT54G router & a total of 7 computers connected w/ a mix of wireless & wired connections. All the computers run XP pro.

One of these computers is an old one we only use to play music on the stereo and I have set up the router to forward ports 20 & 21 to this computer.

We are all college students and would like to be able to access our respective computers from campus so as to be able to work on papers etc w/o the hassle of disks. What is the best way to go about this? I was thinking perhaps have some sort of shortcuts to each computer's shared folders on the computer that current recieves the FTP traffic. Is there a better way & what should I do to protect security?

What ftp server are you using? I've never set up ftp on windows before, but you should be able to confine folks to their designated home directories. If not, I would suggest looking for a new ftp program.

Will someone be around to perform backups? FTP is pretty insecure - it "comes from a time when the internet was a friendlier, safer place."

Please tell me you're not using IIS...

Honestly I havent even gotten far enough to answer most of those questions, I'm just starting to learn about this. What can you recommend?

I would recommend a *nix box. That has a steep learning curve though.

I've heard memebers of this board recommend proftp.

I might sugest a post in the software forum asking for advice on specific ftp software.

From what I have read about your situation, ftp sounds like the best solution.

I asked about backups, because folks love to put warez and other illegal software on hijacked ftp servers. Backups keep you from losing too much data.

Secure Shell on a unix/linux/bsd box would be the best solution.

Skye

so if I put the server software on the computer that currently only plays MP3s, but does not actually have any of the files we would be accessing, would that provide a certain buffer? would it then be possible to provide access to files on the other 6 computers in the house?

would that provide a certain buffer?

Nope. Anytime you run a public accessible server you are running a risk. Backups, to me, become a necessity.

Skye

I'd dump the ftp server idea altogether, too many security issues--unless you already know how to deal with bounce attacks and crackers using ftp redirects. It's too much of a headache, in my opinion.

Instead, as mentioned earlier (kind of), you can run a SSH server on the "server" and download and upload files using scp (secure copy) or sftp (secure ftp). You can get a "not for commercial use" copy of SSH (both client and server) that will run on Windows at http://www.ssh.com/support/downloads/ and if your college doesn't have SSH clients installed on their machines (which I would be surprised if they didn't have them installed on them) you can use PuTTY on a floppy to access your files.

ssh server on windows? Seems a contradiction in terms