Customized remote backup

[Rhythmdvl]

I hope this is the right forum for this?not sure if it should have gone in Programming or here. Please accept my apology if this is in the wrong place.

There are two home offices, located on opposite sides of the country. One has a network attached storage device, the other has a regular internal drive. Both have dynamic IP addresses allocated from their respective ISPs. I have a hosted Web site that can run scripts as necessary.

I want a program that runs in the background to back up the NAT device from one office to the other. In other words, it would run similar to normal backup software (i.e., automatically making backups of files that have been added or changed), but it would send the files over the Internet to the other office.

I?m posting because there are two things I haven?t found. First, the mainstream backup software I?ve looked at so far doesn?t seem to work with an NAT (it?s a Linksys NAS200 mini-Linux box, if that makes a difference). The ones that I?ve found that do seem to be geared towards large-enterprises and run well over a grand(!).

Second, while a lot of backup software has FTP capability, they seem to assume sending to a static IP/location.

Have I overlooked a program that already does this?

If there is nothing available, how hard would it be/what would be entailed by writing (or, rather, having written) a set of scripts to link the two offices together? That is, something that would sit on both computers, communicate with the Web site to locate each other, then use that information to make the connection. Aren?t the elements already in place?isn?t this basically how Napster et al work? I wouldn?t necessarily need the Web site to manage the throughput of the data (is that a cogent use of the term?), just establish the basic P2P connection.

I?ve used Rentacoder in the past with great success, but I don?t have any idea what something like this would require programming-wise. That is, is this a small project (i.e., simple modifications to a set of pre-existing scripts) or something larger and more involved?

Any advice/direction you have would be greatly appreciated ? even if you point me to a more focused forum where this type of question would be more at home.

Thanks!

Rhythm

 

[mikeyes]

First of all setup a Dynamic DNS system at both location so that even though they have dynamic addresses there will be a way to access the other location. Then download and setup Filezilla server software at the location that will receive the backups (http://filezilla-project.org). Then download and setup SyncBackSE $30 (http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbse.html). SyncBackSE does a good job of setting up backup jobs to go over an FTP link. You can use MODE Z compression in the SyncBackSE and Filezilla software to help dynamically compress the data and SyncBackSE does a good job of allowing you to perform incremental backups over the FTP link.

 

[SoulAssassin]

If these are business files you want to use scp or something else that does encryption instead of ftp. Passwords in clear text over the public internet are always fun. You could add Hamachi into the mix if you wanted to.

https://secure.logmein.com/pro...amachi/vpn.asp?lang=en

 

[Rhythmdvl]

Thanks for the direction ? especially the encryption reminder. The incident that triggered all this has prompted me to start looking into building a Linux file server (long story), so as I do I?ll be incorporating/adjusting accordingly. The remote location will only have a Winbox in it, so I?ll still be working with that.

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.tgrmn.com/