Can I use a VPN to share an internet connection?
 

My sister has 40M cable service at her house, here at the hotel I am staying at they have what the staff calls a "T2" and all of the rooms SHARE it. Most of the time I can get "1.0 if I'm lucky" and I'm down to .04M at peak times (loading a simple page can take 30 seconds!!)

So what I want to know, is, can I take my computer to her house, put it in the basement, and set up a VPN thing on it, then use her internet connection, from here?

I thought maybe I'd put in a switch so she could reboot the thing for me if I ever need to, without going down there. My machines always go 30 or so days between reboots anyway..

Is that what VPNs do?
Or should I use some desktop sharing/remote management app? The only one I ever used was crossloop, and it was slower than all hell!!! And it wasn't solid, it froze up A-LOT. Just won't work at all for this..

How much bandwidth do I need to use a remote machine? When this connection gets real slow, I doubt I'd even be able to see/control the remote box...

Any ideas?

It just sucks that I can't connect through her router, from here. It wouldn't do me any good since I'd still be connecting through the hotel network.

Can a VPN be on a VM? I think she has a desktop with the vt bit thing in the cpu...

I guess I'd still be using her drive, though, unless I put one of mine in there for storage only and then ran my programs themselves from here.

you answered your own question...
you won't be able to get faster internet using VPN it since your hotel connection is slow...

accessing her wireles router directly would be good,
but I doubt it's possible because of the range of router...

as for controlling remote machines, so far the best is TeamViewer

But, can I run a VPN on a VM? So she could minimize it and it wouldn't interfere with her use of the machine? Then I'd just be controlling a virtual machine, from here, and it'd have access to her high speed connection...

Can virtual machines connect to internet, though? I mean can the computer itself AND the vm simultaneously use devices? Or would I need a second network adapter?

How would I connect to the remote machine or virtual machine? Can I use the router to assign it a static IP and connect to that, from here?

I have a basic idea of what all of these do, I'm just trying to put together a simple inexpensive solution

oricouldjust

No. You still have to connect from your hotel connection.

But if I connect to a machine through a vpn or something, and that machine I'm connecting to has a fast connection.... It doesn't matter so long as I have enough bandwidth through the hotel to control the mouse/kb and see the screen

That's what I am trying to do

dude, you can only go as fast as the local connection.

The remote machine is not relevant here. You first have to connect to the hotel connection so you are stuck with those speeds. You can't connect to the hotel's connection then log on to the remote machine and expect your connection to all of a sudden be faster. It just won't happen. The main is the hotel's connection so if their connection sucks it won't matter if the remote machine has 10000000Mbit. Your connection will remain at the speed of the hotel's connection.

I must not be putting this the way I'm trying to say it

You want to use the shitty hotel network, to control the screen of a computer at your sisters that uses a 40mb fast connection, via a VNC connection.

You think that it will be faster to view websites downloaded to her computer, than websites downloaded directly to yours at the hotel.

Am I getting that right?

for uploading files to your server i could see where it would be helpful and alot faster (providing the files are already on your pc at your sisters)

is your sister hot? pics?

Yes... I think what you're saying is that when this hotel connection slows to a crawl, there won't be enough bandwidth to allow me to view the remote screen or control it.. right? I do understand that when the hotel connection slows to a crawl I'll still be fucked, no matter how fast the remote machine is. I'd have to be pretty stupid to not understand that!! LoL!

All I'm saying is that most of the time I'll have enough bandwidth through the hotel connection that I'll be able to control the remote machine which will always be lightning fast..

Are there ways of compressing the desktop image on one end and uncompressing it here? With crossloop I could go to a lower "quality" if the connection slowed..

Go live with sister.

Next?

I'm not expecting anything to make my local connection in the hotel room any faster than it is. I tried the one thing that could make that possible. I asked the manager here to lean on corporate to allow him to upgrade their service. He says they probably won't. :1orglaugh

I don't think that's going to speed up your browsing any. We understand what you're trying to do and everyone here is telling you it doesn't work.

You might want to look at using a compression proxy, or else a cellular dongle attached to your computer... but that comes with a monthly fee. Although Virgin Mobile has one that's pre-pay month by month and uses the Sprint network. So if Sprint is good in your area I'd lean towards using that.

You could always switch hotels too :2 cents:

I was living with her after her divorce. It went great, I even did a lot of work on and around the house for her.

The problem was, spanking women is too loud and wakes her up, plus she recently moved her boyfriend in and then I felt all out of place. Plus her and I both always felt like we had to be quiet as hell when we were walking around the house or anything because neither of us ever slept the same hours.

Another thing too I could not stand to be in Hutchinson any more... It is SO GOOD to be out of there. My family members can't come over and pound on my window to wake me up, I'm nowhere fucking NEAR barking dogs now, and there's money to be made here.

Plus I love staying in hotels and I'm staying in a nice clean one over here that doesn't cost hardly anything

I guess that I made it sound like my only concern is browsing.. and I think you're right that it won't give me much of an advantage for simple browsing because my local connection has terrible ping times most of the time anyway. So looking at something on the remote machine would be just as slow as trying to pull it from any other web server. I do understand that.

I'm thinking more in terms of multi tasking. With the faster remote connection I could be watching movies online, downloading some things in the background and uploading some files all at once.

I just don't know how much overhead the VPN adds as far as bandwidth... I can (most of the time) watch a 480p program on hulu through this hotel connection without a problem. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'd have enough bandwidth to watch that same program from a remote machine, because of the overhead of the remote connection software ..... right??

If I DO decide it's worth doing,
What about my idea for setting up a virtual machine on the remote computer? Would it need its own network card? Can I access it through an IP I assign to it through the router config?

I don't think that we disagree on anything ... I just probably didn't articulate what I was thinking too well. I've considered broadband cards but a friend of mine has one (through sprint) and it's been a nightmare. But when you wrote that I realized that doesn't mean that they all suck.

How does the compression proxy work? That sounds really very interesting... if it's not too expensive, and allows you to compress things like say video from websites like hulu.. that'd be great!

I was wondering if remote desktop apps allow you to compress the image, send it through the internet and then uncompress it on the other end. I know it'd take more horsepower but that's not a problem..

are you trying to download things to the computer at the hotel or the computer on the faster connection? Because a faster remote connection won't speed up your hotel internet, but you could download things to the computer at your sisters house, sure.

Exactly .. when I want to download this that and another thing here at the hotel, forget about it. Much less can I have even ONE thing downloading and watch some streaming video at 480p or even 360p!!! Plus I can't upload... I can, but, one 1mb video takes three to four minutes!!

I was thinking that having everything happen on the remote machine (all uploads and downloads) and only using the hotel connection to control it would probably work a-lot better

i dont get it, how come people think like that., its as simple as that.,

u have 1/2" tap at your home and u cant/wont get more water through that no matter where is water coming from......ur tap's capacity is 1/2" only.

obviously it doesn't matter what speed your getting on your remote computer, the hotel network will be the bottleneck


if you wanted to set up something like this anyways (even though it would do you no good for what you are suggesting), it would be easier just to get a dedicated windows server and you can get wicked speeds to the server (but you will still be snails pace slow when you are trying to do anything on the internet at your hotel)

I second this.

Everyone gets what you are saying, you just don't seem to be taking the answer 'no' to well. If you think websites are slow, no you have to do the same connection, remote in to another computer with your bandwidth and then control it. It just doesn't work that way. You are only as fast as your local connection. It is as simple as that. The images on the site might load a bit faster locally, but will still be delayed for you because of the host connection.

spank your sister

Actually you can only go as fast as your slowest bottleneck, regardless of if it is your local connection or elsewhere.

My hotel connection being slow isn't going to make the remote computer any less capable of anything. You're telling me that I can only go as fast as my hotel connection. You can't tell me that the remote machine is going to slow down the the speed of my hotel connection.

If I want to tell the remote computer from here to upload several gigs of data, download 400 different files and open/load 40 tabs in a browser (all at once), I can..

Think of it this way:

Let's say I have no control of the remote computer. I call someone there where it is and instruct them to upload several gigs of data, download 400 different files and open/load 40 tabs in a browser

I can do that

Now why couldn't I instruct the remote machine to do all of that from here, so long as I have enough bandwidth here at the hotel that I can receive the video and send the commands?

The hotel connection is not going to make the remote machine slower. I don't expect for the remote machine to make my hotel connection any faster. They're completely independent of each other!!

That is where we're not speaking the same language. Everyone is thinking I am only talking about one page at a time browsing.

I would expect that browsing through webpages would take LONGER if I do it through a remote machine I've set up. That's why I asked about the added overhead of whatever I would use to control it.

Streaming video will probably be even more difficult than it is, now, but I might have more control over the quality of the video (meaning that when my hotel connection is slow, I could reduce the image quality and possibly still be able to watch the video - instead of being stuck with whatever it's encoded in)

Nobody said that it would. We've only said that YOUR connection FROM THE HOTEL is going to remain the same.

Its a goofy question. You're a goofy guy. These are goofy times.

You're all assuming that I think I can make my hotel connection faster by doing this. Helen Keller would know better than that!!!!!

Why does everyone keep telling me that the connection won't be any better, here? I know that!!!

I think what mr wants is to download a movie on the remote pc then watch it on the hotel computer via remote desktop or whatever once its ready because his hotel connection cant handle the download. Thats what it sounds like to me. Or download things and manipulate them over the connection. Idk =D

Ive never tried to download a movie off of a dedicated server via remote desktop so I cant help ya. Usually for me, doing anything on a remote connection is slow and glitchy but again, I have little experience and my dedicated box isn't set up for that.

Best of luck

hotel connection too slow to make this work.

Call room service and ask for a cable modem.