In what circumstances would you setup a VPN instead of just allowing Remote Desktop to a machine in a network?
VPN or Remote Access
remote desktopvpn
remote desktopvpn
In what circumstances would you setup a VPN instead of just allowing Remote Desktop to a machine in a network?
Best Answer
If all you need to share is a single computer via Remote Desktop, then opening a single port to that computer is probably the easiest solution. It's extremely quick and doesn't require remote users to do anything except run their Remote Desktop Client.
If you need to share multiple computers, printers, and other devices, then allowing VPN access into your local network is probably easier. Once someone is VPN'd in, they can connect to any intranet computer allowed to them without having to poke more holes through your firewall. However, they'll need to VPN before they can do anything.
No one can tell you which one is better for your situation; one is not better than they other, they're just different. You could also just allow Remote Desktop to a single Windows Server terminal server, then users can connect to other internal computers from there. Or, if you have a Windows Server 2008 machine running IIS, you could set up the Remote Desktop Gateway feature and not have to expose any ports to the public Internet other than 443 for the HTTPS server.