Comments on: Windows Home Server Rocks!

By: Steve Hurley

Steve Hurley — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:18:33 +0000

Great discussion.

Does anybody know if the Sprint CDMA (3G) data network explicitly blocks port 4125 (RDP Proxy) needed for Windows Home Server Remote Access?

My Cradlepoint 3G router shows it as open, as does my HomeServer firewall, but the Gibson Research Corporation “shields up” test utility shows the port as closed!

Any suggestions?

As an aside, I know that Sprint blocks port 80 because they don’t want you serving up webpages on that port, and I was able to port-forward that to port 85 on my router, software firewall, and also in Internet Information Services running in Homeserver.
With this done, I just need to tack on”:85″ after the domain address when browsing.

But, 4125 is more difficult to deal with. I read somewhere that this is a “hard wired” port meaning that if your ISP blocks it, you are out of business.

Any comments?

By: Neil

Neil — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:20:03 +0000

For your tunnel and to get the remote access to work with a slick tool, you might try using Hamachi. It’s a software based, open source VPN tunnel. I haven’t tried to run it directly on my WHS, and have just started tinkering with WHS, but I have used it for peer to peer very successfully. I think it will work even better with the WHS environment.

By: Andy S

Andy S — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:00:34 +0000

Tim P, one of the benefits of WHS backups is that the size isn’t huge on the incremental backups. So some nights even over wifi, mine are very fast. Only the monthly are full backups IIRC.

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:19:19 +0000

I fear you’re right about Softsled – sigh. But perhaps limiting support to WHS-connected local PCs might make a difference. Or not.

I believe the 2.0 version of WHS is based on a Server 2008/Win7 core, so perhaps there’s still hope.

By: Ben Drawbaugh

Ben Drawbaugh — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:15:17 +0000

Henry,
I have to believe that they’ve thought of this, since it seems to be such a sought after feature.

Sadly I doubt it will happen since WHS is built on Windows 2003 Server and Media Center is built on Vista. I suppose Windows 7 and Server 2008 might be close enough to make it a reality, but again MS would have to have the desire to do such a thing.

The other problem I see if you’d only be able to access the content via extenders, because lord knows softsled will never happen.

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:08:56 +0000

I posted this suggestion over in the Green Button, but I’m reprating because I’d really like your feedback:

Do you think there’s any chance that Microsoft will port the CableCard supprot from Win7 to the next version of WHS (even if only on an OEM build)? One could use the WHS tuner to provide live HD digital cable to every Media Center extender and/or WHS-connected pc in the house.

By: Ben Drawbaugh

Ben Drawbaugh — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:52:12 +0000

Josh,
Believe me, I tried it, but my work uses a layer 7 firewall that can tell it isn’t SSL traffic. If it was tunneled via SSL then the payload would be encrypted and they wouldn’t be able to tell. Unless of course they turned out SSL packet inspection, but that is a big privacy issue, so I don’t see it happening.

By: Josh S

Josh S — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:20:27 +0000

Tim P,
the great thing about WHS is that it doesn’t do a complete image backup every night, I have two laptops of G wifi and they get backed up every night just like every hard wired PC on my network does.

WHS does a file based backup, that is then incremented each night, so new files or changed files are only backed up, but system files, or anything that didn’t change, don’t get backed up. Also WHS looks and compairs files, so if 7 pc’s that are getting backed up all have the same file, only one copy of that file is backed up, then mirrored to multiple hard drives in your WHS box.

Then when it is time to re-install you have a WHS recovery boot cd like you get with norton ghost, and then it reinstalls windows off of that boot cd.

best backup system I have seen in a long time.

- Josh

By: Josh S

Josh S — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:13:25 +0000

Also have you just thought about port forwarding?

So port 4125 on your lan side is forwarded to 443 on your wan side?

or something like that?

- Josh

By: Ben Drawbaugh

Ben Drawbaugh — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:59:49 +0000

No, I use the Actiontec router provided by Verizon FiOS, which unlike many, I really like.

Besides, my company blocks SSH as well. They use a layer 7 firewall that pretty much blocks all RDP and VPN, but not SSL because it would block business sites.

I haven’t tried Logmein since the new proxy was installed, but that’s a good sugggestion.

I read about the new HP, but I haven’t looked into how it does it and if it is something I can do without buying a HP Media Smart Server.