Bridging two LANs over the Internet?

[nbarb99]

What I'd like to do is "bridge" two independant LANs over the Internet - mine and my friend's. We both have fairly speedy cable connections shared via standard NAT routers. Is it possible to connect two LANs together in this way, so that the computers on both networks continue connecting to the Internet through the correct router but can also ping "across" the Internet to the other LAN?

I think that Smoothwall can do this, but I haven't investigated this. Any thoughts?

 

[cleverhandle]

I don't think you can quite get a "bridge", i.e. the two physical segments aren't going to be on the same broadcast segment. Could be wrong, though...

But a VPN will do what you want. There are a lot of ways to create a VPN, and the difficulty ranges from relatively simple (hardware support in identical routers) to mindbending (software support across wildly different OS's).

Search around the forum and the Net for VPN info - there's quite a bit out there.

 

[nightserver]

hey nbarb

first of all you and your buddy have a good download connection but your upload connection sucks seeing that you guyz have cable modem probably 3 or 4mb down and like 128kbps upload this will kill your internet connection. in order to do this right you need to get a T1 1.5mb on each side this is for best performance.

1) you and your friend both have to get static IP from your isp.

2) its best to setup a vpn router on both sides one at your place and one at your friends this creates a tunnel and thats what you need to have a LAN operating over a public network (Internet) but keep in mind that having the tunnel always open (vpn tunnel) that it requires bandwidth. mostly upload is used when file sharing one side is sending while the other side is receiving and running on 128kbps will feel like a 386 pentium trying to run windows xp....hope this was helpful

 

[nbarb99]

@cleverhandle: Thanks. I was wondering if a VPN is what I wanted, but I wasn't quite sure. You've cleared it up for me

Originally posted by: nightserver
first of all you and your buddy have a good download connection but your upload connection sucks seeing that you guyz have cable modem probably 3 or 4mb down and like 128kbps upload this will kill your internet connection. in order to do this right you need to get a T1 1.5mb on each side this is for best performance

Thanks for the comments. Our connections are more like 3000/300. I realize that a low upload rate will hurt a VPN, but then again: anything we do online together (gaming, file transfers, and so on) will be hurt by a low upload rate