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LogMeIn Hamachi virtually VPNs your Windows Mobile device

Guest PaulOBrien

By Guest PaulOBrien
in Windows Mobile News

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Guest Paul (MVP)

Guest Paul (MVP)

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Posted

Now and again I come across an application that is so damned useful / cool that I just have to tell you about it. One such application is Hamachi from LogMeIn.

This is how LogMeIn describe Hamachi...

VPN Evolved

LogMeIn Hamachi: Instant, Zero Configuration VPN

Your network just became mobile.

LogMeIn Hamachi is a VPN service that easily sets up in 10 minutes, and enables secure remote access to your business network, anywhere there's an Internet connection.

It works with your existing firewall, and requires no additional configuration. Hamachi is the first networking application to deliver an unprecedented level of direct peer-to-peer connectivity. It is simple, secure, and cost-effective.

To help you understand what it is and how it works, let me tell you about how I came across it.

If you're tech savvy, chances are you have to do remote PC support for your family. I know I do, and for that I use the awesome LogMeIn FREE, which lets you remotely control any number of PCs / Macs / Linux machines, either from your PC / Mac / Linux machine or even your Pocket PC (if you haven't checked that out yet, you should!). As well as PC support, I end up doing Windows Mobile support too ;) My dad is sold on Windows Mobile devices (he has a C600 and a JasJar atm), but he's not THE most computer literate person in the world. He's about to swap his pair of devices for a TyTN II, so I started thinking about how I could do remote support of his mobile device as well as his PC.

Sadly, there is no 'LogMeIn FREE' server for Windows Mobile, so that was out of the question. That left me with two ideas, VNC or SOTI Pocket Controller. Both are fine for remote control, but there's one problem. The T-Mobile Web'n'Walk connection he'll be using uses an IP address and NAT that means I won't be able to 'get in to his machine' easily from outside. Problem.

As it turns out, Hamachi - which I discovered while browsing around the LogMeIn site - is the answer. Hamachi allows you to set your machines up in something of a 'Virtual LAN'. Handily, they have a Windows Mobile client in Beta too!

The config went like this. Install Hamachi client on one of my PCs, create a new 'private network'. Install Hamachi client on my device, join new network. Install Hamachi client on my other machines, just for fun. After install, they can all see each other, and magically all belong to a new 5.x address range on a secondary network card. Their own private network, routed over the internet (GPRS / 3G / WiFi in the case of the Windows Mobile device).

This opens up all sorts of possibilities. As the machines can all talk to each other, I can access private web servers on them, connect between them using VNC and use SOTI over TCPIP. Problem solved... and it works great! The Hamachi clients are very unintrusive, free, and even over slow-slow-GPRS the remote control is just about usable! I have my dad's new device sitting here, and I can remote control it on demand, even when it looks like it's off.

Amazing! :(

I hope my discovery is useful to someone else, and i'd love to hear how people take advantage of it! To get started you need a client for your PC / Mac / Linux machine from the main Hamachi download page, and the Windows Mobile Beta client from the LogMeIn Labs page.

Enjoy!

P

hamachisoti3.jpghamachisoti1.jpg

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Guest jmaki

Guest jmaki

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ah! I just found out about hamachi mobile, and then logged into google reader and found I wasn't the only one, haha

is there anyway to get a shared printer to work on a windows mobile device? ;) -- It IS possible via bluetooth, cause I've seen printers advertise the ability to print from bluetooth enabled phones...

Paul, do you know of any way to create a shortcut directly to a particular machine name / directory on windows mobile?

Edited by jmaki
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Guest Paul (MVP)

Guest Paul (MVP)

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re: your blog: "Be able to access files on my phone from a computer (instead of other way around)" - FTP works SWEET for this (running a FTP server on the device).

P

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Guest Paul (MVP)

Guest Paul (MVP)

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;)

I'm doing the same as everyone else I imagine, thinking of all the super cool things I can do with it! I wish I could somehow get Hamachi to let me get to my NAS tho, almost like one of the clients would route a secondary address on the local network... :(

P

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Guest Alex (nedge2k)

Guest Alex (nedge2k)

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Let's just say i'm gonna use it to break out of a heavily locked down area ;) /me wonders if they plan to make a standalone client.

...although saying that, I could prolly just use logmein anyway. Hmmm...need to play :(

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Guest surur

Guest surur

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I've had this installed for a few weeks, but for my purposes its useless. I wanted to access my PNP music server from afar and stream my music, but I found I was one of the supposed 5% that needed to access my network via their proxy server, limiting me to 8 kb/sec, or pay the $5 per month for higher speeds.

Are other people finding they are able to get direct access to the other members of their network on the T-Mobile network, or do you have the same problem?

Surur

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Guest Paul (MVP)

Guest Paul (MVP)

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I have direct access, but only after doing a ton of reading today. If you're NAT'd at both ends, then you will likely get issues. T-Mobile NAT of course, so if you do on your network, that's a sign of trouble. It depends on your router setup, but for me I could either set up all the port forwarding manually (which I have now), or even easier drop the machine into question into a DMZ. I did that earlier and with one click all was well.

There are other implications of doing so i'm sure, but don't give up - it can be done on T-Mo (as witnessed in the screenshot at the top!)

In the screenshot in the first post the device is connected by GPRS, and my MacBook (and therefore it's VMware Fusion session) are in the DMZ on my router. My media center is obviously just NAT'd, hence the blue blob. The screenshot shows SOTI working over GPRS ;)

P

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Guest surur

Guest surur

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I have direct access, but only after doing a ton of reading today. If you're NAT'd at both ends, then you will likely get issues. T-Mobile NAT of course, so if you do on your network, that's a sign of trouble. It depends on your router setup, but for me I could either set up all the port forwarding manually (which I have now), or even easier drop the machine into question into a DMZ. I did that earlier and with one click all was well.

There are other implications of doing so i'm sure, but don't give up - it can be done on T-Mo (as witnessed in the screenshot at the top!)

In the screenshot in the first post the device is connected by GPRS, and my MacBook (and therefore it's VMware Fusion session) are in the DMZ on my router. My media center is obviously just NAT'd, hence the blue blob. The screenshot shows SOTI working over GPRS ;)

P

Would you mind saying which ports you forwarded, and I will give this another go tonight?

Surur

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Guest Paul (MVP)

Guest Paul (MVP)

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Set a port on your router (e.g. '8080') to forward UDP packets to the machine you want a 'green blob' to inside your network.

Then, tell the client (in the settings) to use UDP port 8080.

I think that's all I did, then it was working, can't remember if I set the internal machines UDP port manually too.

This post was useful: http://forums.hamachi.cc/viewtopic.php?t=3875

;)

P

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Guest surur

Guest surur

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Set a port on your router (e.g. '8080') to forward UDP packets to the machine you want a 'green blob' to inside your network.

Then, tell the client (in the settings) to use UDP port 8080.

I think that's all I did, then it was working, can't remember if I set the internal machines UDP port manually too.

This post was useful: http://forums.hamachi.cc/viewtopic.php?t=3875

;)

P

Thanks!! That solved the problem. I had in fact already set up port forwarding, but I did not do anything on the client side. Just adding the port number to the nat page in the specifications did the trick. Lobster tunes plays perfectly over HSDPA on my Vario 3 now! Thx again.

Surur

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Guest NuShrike

Guest NuShrike

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Cool! I was wondering how to do vpn tunneling with the Kaiser. Usually I use ssh+vnc on the laptop, but this makes sense for Windows.

I've already been using Hamachi to play lan Dawn of War: Dark Crusade games with my friends since its builtin DirectPlay is mentally challenged, and Hamachi works very transparently most of the time.

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Guest letsgoflyers81

Guest letsgoflyers81

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I've been using LogMeIn for a while now and just set up Hamachi on my machines. So far it's working great as advertised. However I'm having a problem on my Mogul which is a Windows Mobile 6 Pro device. I installed the beta and can join the network, see peers, and send messages. However I can't browse files on any of the clients. Browsing isn't one of the options in Hamachi when I select a peer and I can't see anything on the remote machines in Resco Explorer. I tried mapping a drive by \\hamachiip\c (I have the C drive shared on one of the remote machines) but it couldn't connect. Is there something that has to be configured to allow browsing remote machines? I read up on everything I could find and I must have missed something. Thanks!

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Guest Paul (MVP)

Guest Paul (MVP)

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Unfortunately, https://secure.logmein.com/labs.asp?lang=en says:

"Known Issues

* Traditional Windows file sharing does not yet work reliably with this build. We recommend using Hamachi Mobile in conjunction with HTTP File Server, which, in our experience, works extremely well."

I had it working briefly, but i'm not sure what I did and it doesn't want to play now ;)

P

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Guest letsgoflyers81

Guest letsgoflyers81

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Unfortunately, https://secure.logmein.com/labs.asp?lang=en says:

I had it working briefly, but i'm not sure what I did and it doesn't want to play now ;)

P

Hmm, too bad. Going by what LogMeIn says I was surprised you had it working with Resco but I figured if you did it, I guess it was possible. Any chance you were on your LAN at home and Resco was actually browsing your network and not going through Hamachi? That might explain it since I can access my network with Resco as long as I'm actually on it.

I installed the HTTP file server they recommended and it works OK, I guess. I've been using Orb for file sharing and streaming media and that works better. It would be nice to have file sharing integrated into Hamachi so I could browse files in Resco, but this will do for now.

Edited by letsgoflyers81
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