[desertmac]

I have a MBP connected to an Airport network in my home. I travel a lot with a second MBP. I want to be able to access the files on the first MBP when I am traveling. Can someone explain how to do this, or point me to a guide that can walk me through this.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[aikiwav]

These are not my ideas (thanks rjt1000 ), but here's an answer I got to a similar question:

My question at the time...

Is there a way for me to make my MacBook more secure when using public wireless systems? I recently read about possibilities of "Evil Twin" networks that mimic a business' wireless network but scans any transmissions for passwords, etc. I'm thinking that conversing with websites that have SSL would be okay, but I'm worried something like my password to MacNN could be seen and used maliciously.

Here is rjt1000's suggestions:

Unfortunately SSL can only protect you from evesdroppers once the SSL connection is established. In an evil twin ploy, before you can get the SSL connection going, the evil twin can host a webpage that mimics the site you want and asks for your password. When you try to log in, it captures it. One thing you can do is to ask the public wifi hotspot for the SSID of its wireless network, so you know which is the right wireless signal to connect to. Better is to use a VPN or other form of encrypted tunnel for sensitive communications like accessing your bank account. There are a number of ways to do this. Here are three:

If you have a home Mac attached to the internet with a secure connection like cable broadband or DSL (or an account on a server somewhere) you can remotely log onto that account using SSH (secure shell) and create a secure SOCKS proxy. You then tell your local web browser to use the SOCKS proxy port on local host (127.0.0.1) and you will be surfing via an encrypted connection to the SOCKS proxy on the remote machine. This article gives some detail of the setup.

Likewise, if you have a home Mac attached to the internet with a secure connection you can remotely surf that computer via an encrypted tunnel. You use SSH (secure shell) with local port forwarding to securely log onto it and then (via the encrypted tunnel created), use a Virtual network client (like Chicken of the VNC) to access a Virtual network server on your home Mac (like Vine Server, formerly OSXvnc) and remotely control your home Mac. This is not as difficult as it might seem. Then open your home Macs web browser and you can start surfing remotely via the encrypted tunnel.

You could also use HamachiX in a similar fashion. HamachiX is the OS X front end of Hamachi. You install HamachiX on each of your computers and then set up an encrypted LAN between them, regardless of the geographical location of the computers. You can then use a Virtual network client as above and remotely surf you home computer via the encrypted LAN. The advantage of Hamachi is that it requires less setup if your home computer is behind a router or firewall, or has a changing external ip address.
(Last edited by rjt1000 : Yesterday at 11:08 AM)

I haven't had a chance to set anything up myself yet...but I'm excited to try...good luck with it.