Remote Access: Securely connect your devices over the internet with ZeroTier

hello and welcome to bite my pie in this video we're going to look at how to safely access devices on your home network remotely across the internet to do this we'll be using xero tier which as i'll demonstrate uses an ingenious approach to simplify the process while at the same time keeping your connection secure so if this sounds of interest to you stick around before diving into the setup let's take a quick look at how you traditionally allow remote access to a local network and then see how zero tier differs in its approach on a home network all of your traffic goes through the router including anything heading for the internet this stream of data is broken up into small segments known as packets to make it easier to transport but whereas the packets inside your home network are typically allowed to move around freely from device to device those destined for the internet have to pass through your router's firewall outbound traffic that is from your home network to the internet is usually unrestricted or allowed so you can surf the web and your search results bring back the information you've requested however traffic coming the other way in other words anything originating from the internet and trying to access your home network is usually blocked by default on most routers this is a good thing otherwise anyone out there on the world wide web would be able to gain entry into your local network which would be disastrous so the traditional way to allow remote access to your home network is to open a port in your firewall this is like poking a hole through it to allow specific traffic in for example if you set up an open vpn server on your local network and open port 1194 in order to connect to it securely you'd then be able to access your home network remotely likewise opening up port 443 would allow you to create a https connection to an apache web server if you happen to have one running internally in the case of a web server you may well want anyone on the internet to be able to access it after all what good is a website that no one can view but for numerous reasons i wouldn't recommend running a public website from your home network anyway not least of which because your isp may not allow it and as with any open port it could risk exposing your local network to the internet particularly if the web server isn't kept up to date obviously the more ports you open the greater the security risk sure you can and should implement security measures to prevent unauthorized access but any time you open an inbound port on your router you're potentially creating a weak spot into your network another issue when creating a remote connection in this way is that you need to know your public ip address this is assigned by your internet service provider and worse still on a home network is usually dynamic meaning it may not always be the same now there is a service known as dynamic dns that solves this problem by letting you set up a memorable domain name this then resolves to your public ip address even if it changes but as you can no doubt tell the overall process of setting this up is a little involved so let's take a look at how xero tier handles remote access shall we the basic concept is to put everything on the same network so just as all of the devices in your home are on a single network and can therefore talk to each other xero tier takes this to a whole new level by creating what to all intents and purposes is one local network that operates over the internet so any device you join to this network can communicate with any other device that you add how is this even possible at least that's what i wondered when i first discovered this software and is it secure that was the second thought to run through my mind to answer the first question xero tier constructs a virtual network that you can add your devices to to do this when you install the software it creates a virtual network adapter on the device and as you add more devices each of these virtual adapters is on the same network this is possible because by creating a zero tier account you actually configure the virtual network and control which devices are allowed to connect to it with regards to the second question you can be confident that your connection is secure as xero tier uses 256-bit end-to-end encryption to quickly set out the process first you create an account with zero tier the free one should more than suffice for most home users second you set up your virtual network third install the zero tier software on each device that you'd like to connect and fourth allow the devices to join your virtual network now that's all well and good but precisely how do your devices find one another to communicate in the first place as an example let's say i've set up a web server that i want to connect to from my smartphone no matter where i am on the internet the web server is running on my home network and i'm out at a friend's house having coffee suddenly i have a desperate need to connect to my web server i've already added both devices to my virtual network when i turn on the zero tier connection on my smartphone it contacts xero tiers servers to establish a connection to that virtual network and therefore my web server remember this connection is encrypted from end to end so even xero tier can't see the data passing through it they'll just know the ip address where the connection came from and the ip address where it went to once the connection is established xero tier will try to create an encrypted tunnel directly between the devices so that the traffic doesn't even need to be relayed through zero tears servers most of the time this works fine and also results in a faster connection speed but if for some reason this isn't possible it's technically a process known as nat traversal then all of the data will continue to be relayed through zero test servers if you don't like the sound of this and since zero tier is open source you could spin up your own relay servers apparently the process of how this works will be changing in xero tier 2.0 to make it both easier and completely decentralized but if you'd like to read about how it works now you can take a look at the manual on the project's website setting this up is beyond the scope of this tutorial hopefully just from what we've seen already you can start to appreciate the advantages of using xero tier best of all you shouldn't even need to configure your firewall or manually open any ports okay now that we know what zero tier is and the basics of how it works let's dig in and start setting up this software defined networking here i am on a windows computer but you can do this on any device with a web browser and i'm going to open google chrome but feel free to use your browser of choice we're going to search for xero tier and it's this website xerotier.com the first thing you need to do assuming you don't have one already is create an account so click on the sign up button if you pop in your name your email address and then create a password from there click on register xero tier will then send you a verification email that you'll need to click on to activate the account once you've done that you'll be able to log in and when you've done so you'll be confronted by this screen you can see it gives us some getting started instructions so first then we need to create a network and we can do that by clicking on this create a network button now let's configure that network by clicking on its id xero tier has given it a random name so let's first call it something more meaningful if i delete that i'm going to go with byte my pi or lowercase changes to the settings are saved automatically you may have noticed when making a change the box turns orange and when it goes green then returns to blue the change has been saved you can enter a description for your virtual network if you'd like by default your xero tier network will be private that means you have to authorize or allow devices to join it alternatively you could make the network public but unless you have a good reason for doing so i wouldn't recommend this anyone who has your network id can connect to a public network but even if your network is private it's still best not to disclose this information don't worry i'll be deleting this network before i publish the video okay if we scroll down the page to the advanced section xero tier has set an ip range for our virtual network depending on what this is you may wish to change it if you're familiar with ip addressing you've probably noticed that each of these ip ranges belongs to a special subset of ipv4 addresses that are private without getting bogged down in the intricacies of networking theory these ranges are reserved for private networks and are not publicly rootable over the internet this highlights the fact that zero tier is creating a private virtual network the clever part is that this is accessible over the internet yet still behaves like a local network if you'd like to manually configure this virtual network you can click on the advanced tab or alternatively you can just select one of the other ranges i'd suggest one of the 10 dot ranges as that shouldn't conflict with your existing home network i'd also go for one with the first three numbers or octets as they're technically known filled in this will give you a virtual network with 256 ip addresses and since zero tier's free account only allows for 100 devices to connect to it is more than enough right for this demonstration i'm going to go with 10.147.18 and you can see up here under manage routes that the lan has now changed to that network and easy as that that's our zero tier virtual network configured if you scroll back up to the top of the page just make a note of your network id okay let's take a look at how to install the xero tier software on the devices we want to connect to our virtual network in the last video we set up our own personal cloud service with nexcloud if you missed it and would like to see what that entails i've put a link in the video description let's start them by adding the next cloud ubuntu appliance to our zero tier virtual network first we need to remotely access it which on this windows computer i can do from the command prompt so log in using the ssh command the username of your ubuntu account and the ip address of your next cloud server remember this must be done on a computer that has the ssh keys once connected we need to install the zero tier software and since ubuntu appliances use snap packages we're going to use this method to carry out the installation so the command to enter is snap space install space zero tier dash one when you type that in press the enter key with the zero tier 1 snap package installed let's run the following command to check its status which is sudo because it requires admin writes space zero tier dash one dot zero tier again dash cli space info and press enter now as you can see it's already reading as being online but it doesn't matter if yours isn't yet next we need to type the following command to enable the virtual network adapter on our next cloud server and that is snap space connect space zero tier dash one colon network dash control and then press enter now if you run the zero tier info command again you can see if it's online don't worry you don't have to type it all in again if you press the up arrow key on your keyboard twice it'll bring the command back and then you can press the enter key once more and hopefully even if it wasn't before your zero tier connection should now be showing online make a note of the virtual network adapter's id as we're going to need it a little later remember earlier when i asked you to jot down that network id from your xero tier account well we're going to need it now for the next command which is sudo space zero tier dash one dot zero tier dash cli space join space and then your network id which in my case is 0 triple c b 7 5 2 f 7 3 f 1 8 7 f it's worth double checking that you've typed it incorrectly this command is going to join the next cloud ubuntu appliances virtual network adapter to our zero tier private network so let's press enter to do just that now if you're following along remember that we set up a private virtual network so even though we can see that it's joined okay the connection won't actually work until we authorize it in our zero tier account so let's open up a web browser return to xerotier.com and log in to do precisely that once logged in click on your network id scroll down the page to where it says members we can clearly see that a device has joined the network be aware it can take around 30 seconds to a minute before a new device shows up in your xero tier accounts control panel if you look underneath address you should see the virtual network adapters id that we made a note of before so just check that this is the same and then to join the next cloud server to our zero tier network all that we need to do is tick this little box underneath authorization and simple as that we should have a connection it's a good idea to give it a name to help identify the device on your network so i'll just call this next cloud and optionally you can enter a description xero tier will issue an ip address to each device that connects to the network using the ip range we specified earlier you can see here underneath managed ips that my next cloud server has been given the ip address 10.147.8 now that's fine because that address is tied to that device so we can access it through it but let's say that i want to change it to something that's just a little bit easier to remember to do that i can enter the new address next to the plus below obviously it still needs to be part of the same network range so i'm going to go with 10.147.18.50 and then click on the plus sign since i don't want the original address anymore i'm going to delete it by clicking on the trash can it may take a little while for your device to reconnect to the network but you'll know it's done so when the physical ip changes from unknown back to your device's public ip address and that's it now my next cloud server is accessible on the ip address that i've just set if the device you've just added is one that you want to connect to like the next cloud server jot down its ip address as you'll need it later so let's minimize the web browser and return to the command prompt where i'm still remotely logged in to my next cloud ubuntu appliance and there's a couple of things we can do here to check our new network so we can enter the command sudo space zero tier dash one dot zero tier dash cli space list networks and press enter and among other things this shows us our network id the name that we gave to the zero tier network mine was bite my pie and the ip address we just set in our zero tier control panel finally if we run the command ip space a this shows us the computer's network interfaces my next cloud server is connected to the router by an ethernet cable and has the ip address 192.168.0.10 but more importantly we can see that it's now got this virtual network adapter and the zero tier ip address of 10.147.18.50 that are manually set great so we've now added our first device but a single device isn't much use on a network so let's go add another so here we are on a different windows pc and we're going to add this to our zero tier network if i open the command prompt and type the command ip config and press enter we can see that this computer is on the 192.168.10 network my next cloud server is on the 192.168. network so at the moment there's no way these two machines should be able to communicate with each other let's verify this by running a ping command i'm going to enter the ip address of my next cloud ubuntu appliance and if i press enter sure enough there's no reply okay let's fix this by installing xero tier in windows first we're going to open the web browser and we're going to head back to xerotier.com from the home page click on download you can see the various platforms that zero tier is available for as i'm on a windows machine i'm going to click on windows and then save the program when it's finished downloading you can close your web browser and let's go find it in our downloads directory it's the usual type of windows installation wizard if we double click the program to run it let's close file explorer and then click on install say yes to make windows happy and when it's completed the installation you can click finish to launch the software and then click yes again now if we look down in the taskbar we can see that we've gained a zero tier icon and clicking on it shows us the context menu it's worth making a note of the node id since that's been issued to this device we can use it to authenticate the windows pc before authorizing it to join our zero tier network speaking of which let's begin that process now so click on join network you need to click in the box and enter your zero tier network id so mine is 0 treble c b 752 f 7 3 f 1 8 7 f you want to make sure that allow managed is ticked as this allows it to obtain its settings from those we configured in the zero tier control panel and unless you have a special use case you can leave allow global and allow default unticked then click on join as we want the virtual network adapter to function correctly on our xero tier network click on yes right now we need to log back into our xero tier control panel to authorize this windows computer so in your web browser head over to xerotier.com log back into your account click on your network id and if you scroll down the page to the members section again we can see that i've now got a second device trying to join my network if it's not there just wait a moment for it to appear i can tell this is my windows computer because it's the same node id i made a note of a moment ago so when you're happy for it to connect to your network tick the authorize box and a few seconds later we can see that it's being given an ip address on my 10.147.18 network i'm going to give it the name win pc dash more pi and i'm also going to change its ip address to 10.147.18.75 and click the plus and then i'm going to remove the original ip address i'm also going to jot down the new ip address as i'll be showing you how to remotely connect to it a little later but for now if we scroll back up the page i'm going to log out of my account and close the browser right let's first check that our new settings have taken effect so if we open up the command prompt again and retype ipconfig and press enter all being well you should now be seeing at least two network adapters so here i've got the windows computer's ethernet adapter and now i've also got a zero tier virtual adapter and as you can see the virtual adapter has the ipa address that i just set of 10.147.18.75 if you remember earlier when i added my next cloud server to the zero tier network i gave that the ip address 10.147.18.50 so now that both of those devices appear to be on the same virtual network here comes the moment of truth if i clear the screen with a cls i'm going to try pinging my next cloud server so let's pop in its ip address then fingers crossed press enter and just like that we have connectivity now that's great but to be of any real use we need to do something with the connection so let's see if i can access my next cloud server through it and this time i'm going to put its virtual ip address into my web browser and while that's not quite the result we'd like to see it's a good start because it means we can reach next cloud's web server what's actually happened is a security feature of nexcloud it doesn't like the fact that we're trying to access it through this ip address which it doesn't recognize but fret not because we can soon remedy that to do that we need to return to a computer that can remotely access the next cloud ubuntu server so i'm no longer on the morphe windows computer i'm back on the my pi windows pc and to help differentiate the two moving forward i've put their names on the respective desktops so i'm going to open the command prompt and remote back into the next cloud server what we're actually going to do then is add the zero tier ip address for the next cloud server to next cloud's trusted list because in the ubuntu appliance version next cloud is running as a snap package the process is slightly different but don't worry it's pretty straightforward first we want to find the ip addresses or domain names that next cloud currently allows we can do this by typing the command sudo space snap space run space next cloud dot occ space config colon system colon get space trusted underscore domains space zero next cloud stores its trusted domains and ip addresses in slot entering this command will show us the information in slot zero and here we can see the local ip address of my next cloud server so rather than entering that command again press the up arrow on your keyboard and this time delete the zero on the end and enter one instead since that's returned no result it means that slot 1 is empty you need to find your first available slot and then we're going to enter the following command sudo space snap space run space next cloud dot occ space config colon system colon set space trusted underscore domains space and then the number of your first empty slot which in my case is one space dash dash value equals and then xero tiers ip address for the next cloud server which for me is 10.147.18.50 so let's press enter to input that and it gives us a confirmation that it's added the ip address to the trusted domains it's worth restarting the next cloud server to make sure that the change takes effect and we can do that with sudo reboot give it a minute to start back up and then we'll go and try again so i'm back on the second windows pc named more pi just to show that in the command prompt you can see that the virtual network adapter has the ip address of 10.147.18.75 and if i reopen the web browser let's try the next cloud server zero tier address again which is 10.147.18.50 and just like that we have our next cloud login screen obviously you could also install the windows next cloud app and use the zero tier ip address to connect remotely through that as well naturally the zero tier virtual adapter has to be enabled for the connection to work but this should happen automatically also if you don't see the zero tier icon in your taskbar you can easily restore it by clicking on the zero tier program in the start menu let's have another quick look at the context menu now that we're connected so here we can see that i'm joined to the buy my pi virtual network and if i click on show networks we get more detailed information about the connection lastly you may have noticed that the browser is still telling us that the connection to the next cloud server is unencrypted while that's partially true in as much as the data is passing around our virtual network on a plane http connection remember that the entire zero tier network is encrypted from end to end so anything routed through it for me that's any device connected to the 10.147.18 network is securely traversing the internet inside a 256-bit encrypted tunnel of course there's nothing to stop you running a https connection inside your zero-tier network effectively giving you two layers of encryption that might be considered overkill but to each their own and it would certainly take more configuration okay two devices connected let's add another for the third connection i'm going to set up a remote desktop session from one windows computer to another usually i'd advise against using rdp or the remote desktop protocol over the internet as it's not the best from a security point of view but since we'll be using it inside our encrypted virtual network that won't be an issue as you can see i'm still on the more pi windows pc as this is the computer i'll be remoting into it currently has a local ip address of 192.168.10.11 but it also has the zero tier ip address that are set of 10.147.18.75 to allow the computer to be controlled remotely we need to turn on remote desktop so from the start menu let's open settings from there we need to head to system and then click on remote desktop all we need to do is toggle on the slider and then click on confirm remember i've already added this pc to my xero tier network so now it's ready to go this is the windows computer i'm going to use to remote into the more pi pc in order to do that i need to first join this to my zero tier network as these two windows machines are on different networks we've already covered how to add a windows computer to zero tier so rather than go through that again let's skip ahead if we take a quick look in my xero tier account you can see that i've authorized the byte my pi windows pc to join my virtual network i've also given it an identifiable name xero tier has issued it with the ip address of 10.147.18.26 because i don't want to access this pc i'm just using it to access another device i haven't changed this address as i don't need to remember it okay if we look now at the buy my pi pc's network adapters you can see that its physical nic has the ip address of 192.168.0.50 so this cannot connect to the more pi windows pc which if you recall has the ipa address 192.168.10.11 but if we look at its zero tier virtual adapter with its 10.147.18.26 address this should certainly be able to connect to the more pi pc's corresponding virtual adapter at 10.147.18.75 so let's test that now if we click in the search box and type remote we can then select remote desktop connection first i'm going to try and connect to the more pi windows pc by entering its local ip address which is 192.168.10.11 and click connect unsurprisingly as it's on a different network the connection failed now let's enter more pi's virtual ip address so that's 10.147.18.75 and once again click connect straight away we get a login prompt i need to enter my username and password for the more pi computer so that's more pi and pop in my password and let's see if we can connect by clicking on ok and this is a good sign because it's what you'd usually expect to see when initiating a windows remote desktop connection note that the name in the certificate from the remote computer is more pi pc if you haven't specifically called your computer anything you may get a more random name and i need to select yes to continue connecting marvellous here i am remotely logged into the more pi pc from the buy my pi computer you can tell that it's a remote connection from the little bar at the top of the screen once connected i can basically do anything on the remote computer as if i was sitting in front of it be aware that when accessing it over the internet the response may be a little slower than you used to i can move between the two computers by clicking on the minimize button in the top bar and then clicking on the remote desktop connection in the taskbar and then when i finish working on the remote pc i can either sign out of it or just click on the cross in the top bar to close the connection and then confirm that you want to disconnect at the risk of stating the obvious hopefully it goes without saying that in order to access any computer remotely you first need to ensure that that pc is powered on and that's how you connect to a windows computer remotely from a fourth connection i'm going to look at mobile and i'm going to go through how we can connect from android to our zero tier network if you'd prefer to go the apple route you can just as easily do this on ios so here i am on the android home screen and the first thing we're going to do is go grab the xero tier app so let's open the play store and search for xero tier and i'm going to install the app with that done let's return to the home screen hopefully you've got an icon if not take a peek inside your app drawer right let's open xero tier and we want to add a network you need to enter your network id which for me is zero treble c b 752 f 7 3 f 1 8 7 f you have the option of routing all traffic through xero tier but as i only want to use this to connect to other devices on my zero tier network that's not necessary and you also have the option to use custom dns servers again i'm going to stick with the default and then click on add network okay so the network's added but before we enable it let's first click on settings since most android devices are mobile if you're planning on using this connection while you're out and about you'll most likely want to turn on use cellular data if you have a fairly limited data allowance don't worry about it using all your data as you can turn the zero tier connection on and off as needed but if you only want to use it on wi-fi don't tick this box i'm going to leave ipv6 turned on as it should help when initially establishing the connection and when you've selected your preferences tap the back button to turn on the zero tier network adapter you need to toggle the slider and we get a connection request message so click ok to accept it after a short while your connection will change to online make a note of the id as just like any other device android is no different and we need to authorize it to join the virtual network next then we need to log into our xero tier account you could do this through the web browser on your smartphone or tablet but i'm going to return to the buy my pi pc to do so hopefully this is starting to become a familiar exercise as we open a web browser and return to xerotier.com and after you've logged back in click once again on your network id then scroll down the page to the members section and we can see that my fourth connection has appeared checking the address column i can see that it's the same id i noted in android confirming that it belongs to me and it's not some random stranger trying to join my network so i can tick on the little box to authorize the connection as i only want to connect to other computers from android and not remote into the android device itself i'm perfectly happy with the ip address that has been automatically assigned to it so that's it i can log out of my xero tier account back on android the network name has now appeared confirming i'm connected to my bytemarpi virtual network you can also see that at the top of the screen we have this little key letting us know that the zero tier connection is active so to disable or enable xero tiers virtual adapter simply toggle the slider either off or on just remember to turn it on before trying to connect to another device on your virtual network and even if you leave it on all the time you'll still have to turn it back on following a restart of android okay if we return to the home screen let's try remotely accessing another device on my virtual network as luck would have it i have the next cloud app here on my home screen this was previously connected locally to my next cloud server but as it's no longer on that network you can see it can't currently connect so let's fix that by going to my next cloud account icon and selecting manage account i'm going to access the three dots context menu and temporarily remove my next cloud account don't worry about the scary message yes it will delete the local files but since next cloud stores these on the server and synchronize is with it we'll get them back when we reconnect so select ok to proceed then if we exit out of the accounts section now we can log in through xero tier by entering the next cloud server's virtual ip address which in my case is http colon double forward slash 10.147.18.50 and then enter this by either pressing the enter key on your keyboard or tapping this arrow on your touchscreen from here we can log in then it's just a case of entering your next cloud account username and password and logging in lastly you just need to grant android access to your next cloud account once connected your files will start being downloaded from the server as the next cloud app synchronizes your account with it and that's how we connect android to next cloud through the zero tier network thereby making your next cloud server accessible on your smartphone or tablet wherever you have an internet connection for my fifth and final connection i'm going to look at joining a linux desktop pc to my zero tier virtual network i'll be using the ubuntu 20.04 lts or long term support desktop operating system but the steps should be similar whatever distro you're running okay here we are on the ubuntu desktop and the first thing we need to do is open a web browser you guessed it we're going to head to xerotier.com and then click on the download link and then select linux we're going to use the second command to install xero tier as it's more secure let's move the browser to one side of the screen so click the top bar and hold down the mouse button as you drag it across then when the bounding box appears let go next we need to open the terminal click on show applications and start typing terminal when the application appears click on it and let's resize this to fill the other half of the screen it's also worthwhile right clicking on the terminal icon and adding it to favorites to keep it pinned in the dock now i could install xero tier using its snap package just as i did earlier on the next cloud ubuntu appliance especially since snaps are natively supported in ubuntu but as this isn't the case in every linux distribution let's continue with the installation method given on xero tiers website this has a couple of requisites in particular we need both gpg and curl to carry out the installation while ubuntu already has gpg installed by default unfortunately this isn't the case with curl so let's install that first now before installing any package it's always a good idea to make sure that the operating system is up to date and we can do that with the following two commands sudo apt update after entering a command press enter to execute it and if the command begins with sudo you'll probably need to enter your password as well so that's the first command and the second one is sudo apt upgrade so my computer was already up to date if yours finds any available packages simply type y for yes on the keyboard and press enter to install them okay now that we're up to date let's install curl and that's as easy as typing sudo apt install curl great we're ready to install zero tier now the reason i set up my windows side by side like this is it's much easier to copy and paste the text you're also far less likely to make a mistake than typing such a long command so click and drag to highlight all of the text then right click on it and choose copy then right click in the terminal and choose paste and with that done we can press enter and there we have it success it's helpfully given us this device's zero tier address which we'll need to confirm in our zero tier account before authorizing it so jot that down and let's go do that now since we've already got the web browser open let's go to my.xerotier.com and press enter and we can log into our account as usual once logged in click on your network id then scroll down the page to the members section as you can see at the moment i only have the four members it also appears that i forgot to name the last one so let's do that now now the reason the ubuntu computer hasn't yet revealed itself is because i still need to join it to the virtual network and i can do that back in the linux terminal by entering the command sudo space xero tier dash cli space join space then i need to pop in my network id which is zero treble c b seven five two f seven three f one seven and then press enter if prompted pop in your password and now we have a join ok message and if i look across at my xero tier account i can see that it's now showing up in my members section and also the address checks out to the one that i noted down a few moments ago so i'm going to tick the box to authorize my ubuntu computer and now it's virtual network adapter has an ip address right so let's name it ubuntu and then i can log out of my zero tier account just before we test the connection i'd like to show you a couple of useful commands so they both need to be run as the super user or root and so start with sudo and they both use the main command zero tier dash cli but the first one ends with info this is a good one to remember in case you need to display a device's zero tier node id or address and then the second command ends in list networks and as you might expect this one gives us useful information about our zero tier virtual network including the network id the name of the network and the ip address of the device's virtual network adapter okay enough technical jargon let's see if it actually works i'm going to close the terminal and maximize the web browser let's first try accessing my next cloud server so that's on 10.147.18.50 splendid now let's try something a little bit different i'm going to once again remotely access the more pi windows pc that i set up earlier but this time from linux if you recall i previously connected to it from another windows machine as it's a windows remote desktop connection but such trivialities should not deter us as there's an app that will allow for precisely this type of shenanigans and better yet it's pre-installed on ubuntu so if we return to show applications and start typing reminer and click on the app when it appears as it tells us reminer is a remote desktop client and even though it's a linux application among other things it supports microsoft's remote desktop protocol so make sure that rdp is selected and then enter the virtual network adapter's ip address of the windows computer that you want to remotely access for me that's 10.147.18.75 if you're going to be connecting to the remote computer on a regular basis you could click on the new connection profile button but for now i'm just going to go with the quick connect option and press enter to start the connection i can see from the certificate that it's the more pi pc your computer may have a more generic name something like lenovo or dell so we just need to click yes to accept the certificate and start the connection then you need to enter the username and the password of the computer that you're trying to connect to and click on ok to log in as the remote screen is a bit small let's maximize the window and then to fill the available space i'm going to click on the toggle dynamic resolution update button you can even go full screen if you wish so this is quite similar to windows own remote desktop client in fact if you hover over the top bar you can even pin it into position so that it stays there you've probably noticed that the desktop wallpaper isn't showing this is because by default reminder will set pretty low resolution settings to help speed up the remote connection if this bothers you and your connection speed is fast enough to cope you can disconnect from the current session and then manually enter some parameters there's quite a lot of granular control in here but you don't need to enter everything if i was going to save the connection i'd give it a more meaningful name make sure that the protocol is set to rdp in the server box you want to enter the remote computer's ip address you can enter the remote machine's username and password to save typing them in later you can even set the initial resolution size of the remote connection if it's not already set the color depth to gfx 32 bits per pixel and then flick over to the advanced tab here we have arguably what is the most important setting so if you'd like a good quality image at the expense of all else set this to best slowest and then you could save these settings save and connect or as i'm going to do just click connect and even in the small window now we can see the remote computer's wallpaper so let's make it bigger again and now we have microsoft windows in all its full color glory [Music] as with when we did this from a windows computer we can minimize the remote connection to move between the two computers or click on reminisce shortcut in the dock then select the remote pc to return to it then when you've finished with your remote session you can either disconnect from it as we did a moment ago or you could even shut the remote computer down and that's how to securely connect from ubuntu to windows using the remote desktop protocol over your xero tier network before we finish let's quickly discuss removing devices from xero tier i've logged back into my account control panel and i'm back in the members section if i just want to temporarily remove a device from my virtual network i can de-authorize it so let's say i want to disconnect the bike my pi windows pc all i need to do is deselect the tick next to it this way if i later want to reconnect it i just need to tick the authorization box again but let's say i want to permanently remove a device this is where the trash can on the far right comes in if i click on that i can then permanently delete the computer this could be useful if for example you're selling it be aware that if you did delete a device and then needed to read it before xero tiers database had purged the record you would have to do so manually so when you're sure that you want it gone click on delete with regards to the zero tier software installed on a device that you've removed you should be able to uninstall this in the usual fashion for that particular operating system and that's almost it for this video i hope you now have a better understanding of what xero tier is and how it can benefit you once you begin to get familiar with xero tiers control panel in the web interface and setup process on each device you'll start to see how easy it is to expand your virtual network well i didn't mention it in the main part of this video as it's best not to over complicate things at first once you become familiar with xero tier you don't have to stick with a single network that's right you can actually set up multiple virtual networks several may be overkill but it could be useful to have a couple if you have particular devices that you only want to be able to access certain other devices so go turn the internet into your own secure and private lan or local area network that brings us to the end of this video as always if you enjoyed it please like and subscribe and if you'd like to be notified when i post the next one just click the bell icon thanks for watching and until next time take care [Music] you

Channel: Byte My Pi

Views: 14,562

Keywords: zerotier, nextcloud, remote access, vpn, remote desktop, windows, linux, android, remote connection, open source, remote desktop connection, rdp

Id: 7C2AGnr9Q-w

Length: 50min 44sec (3044 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020