I should also note…I don’t feel the content here should be censored. Agreed, this isn’t a porn site. If the you think some of the off-beat content would raise issues, just don’t surf from corporate networks…period…
If you want to surf from work but don’t want to use the corporate networks and if you have a Windows XP Pro at home and your computer is connected to the internet, my simple solution is use window remote desktop.
Leave your home computer on, enable remote desktop for your home computer, reconfigure it to run on port 80 or 443 OR reconfigure your home router to port forward inbound traffic on 80 or 443 to your desktop on port 3389, and then from work, remote desktop into your home computer for your browsing needs.
This should be more than ample information for you techie savy people to do figure out what to do. But for some of you less savy, here’s a more detailed step.
Disclaimer: contrary to what people may think, I’m not an I.T. junkie. Yes, I do a lot of software, no I’m not I.T. operations and cable monkey, and no, not all software is I.T. So don’t consider this expert advice or blame me for any flaws/issues you get into.
1)On your home computer, enable windows remote desktop sharing. If you can’t figure this out, sorry don’t bother trying to understand the rest.
2)Make windows remote desktop visible from the internet. The default port that is used is 3389 which more than likely is blocked by your corporate IT dept. Since 80 and 443 are default ports for http and https, it’s open. NOTE: I won’t talk about the aspects regarding security of your desktop in doing this. That’s left as a exercise for the reader.
1)Easy approach. Change your personal firewall’s port forwarding so that internet traffic on port 80 or 443 gets redirected to port 3389 on your personal computer at home.
2)Slightly harder: If you’re link me and purchased that cheap-ass router from Fry’s which doesn’t support port forwarding, then reconfigure your home computer’s remote desktop to listen on port 80 and 443. Here’s a link on how. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306759
3) Make note of the internet address where your home computer is on. If you’re using DSL or cable modem, this is most likely a dynamically assigned address. So everytime you reboot your computer or router, you probably need to check if your ipaddress has changed.
Alternatively you can use a dynamic DNS service that automatically binds dynamically changing IP addresses to a host name. A free dynamic dns service is provided by http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/
4) From work, just launch the remote desktop client
The computer name to connect to will be
(ipaddress):80 or (ipaddress):443
Once you log into your home computer, happy surfing.
