Remote Access without Teamviewer or Hamachi - Part 1 of 2

Question

I want to securely access my Raspberry Pi running Arch Linux from far, far away. (The entire system is running on a 2GB microSD card by the way.) I'm not afraid of the bash shell and I'm not afraid to work hard to get this done.)

Questions:

• Do I need to setup a virtual private network VPN?
• If I do need a VPN, would you recommend openVPN or something else?
• Do I need to learn about network address translation (NAT)?
• Do I need to learn about port forwarding?

Current Tools:

• I have SSH setup on the Pi.
• I have VNC setup on the Pi.

Preferences:

• I don't want to use Hamachi because it limits your connections unless you pay a ton of money.
• I don't want to use TeamViewer because I feel that its very inefficient and bloated.
• Basically, I don't like the idea of sending my information through some company as a way of sacrificing control and freedom for convenience.

P.S. If I would have better luck posting this question on a different forum, which one would you suggest?

Part 2 of this discussion can be found here: Remote Access without Teamviewer or Hamachi - Part 2 of 2

Answer 1

you don't need a VPN to do that... only to forward on your router the SSH and VNC ports (something like 22 and 5900) to your RPi address. If you have a fixed IP (or a dynamic but with a service like DynDNS), it should work.

You could also set up a VPN if you like more security/privacy, and in that case OpenVPN is great.

hope it helps.