Connect to another computer remotely

Hi,

I am not sure if this is the best place to ask this. I need to connect to a computer at another location. I know I can use Teamviewer, Logmein, Windows Remote Assistance etc. type of things but I don’t want to interrupt the current user. I mean I don’t want to takeover the control of the computer. I just want to be able to browse through files such as FTP. Is this possible, do you have any ideas how to do it?

Thanks.

I imagine different versions of different OS have different ways of networking. What OS do you have on your computers?

Sorry, I should have given that info. I am on Windows Vista, need to connect to Windows 7. But as I said, I don’t want to take control of the computer, more of a FTP like connection.

I would guess you need to setup a DNS address for each computer so they can be found over the internet and have a shared folder on each machine.

Thanks but I guess that requires a Windows Server version.

I don’t think so, but you do need to create a common “workgroup”.

It doesn’t require server – any version of win7 can share folders. That said you probably don’t want to expose that over the internet; outside of the nasty security risks you are running exposing all the necessary ports – you are effectively making the internet your LAN – SMB is not a good protocol for accessing files over the internet.

IIRC the built-in IIS supports FTP on win7 which would work a bit better.

In installed cygwin and sshd on windows 7 and use ssh to browse/copy files from any other computer with an ssh client (i.e., putty on windows)

This has the added advantage of using an encrypted connection between the machines.