Since I commute to school every day, and my home iMac is by far my most powerful computer, I’ve been looking into ways to connect securely to my home network from anywhere. After several hours spent reading about how to tunnel VNC traffic over SSH, I stumbled across an awesome utility called Sharetool.

Sure, I could configure my network using my .ssh config, and messing around with my router, and running a manual VNC server, but why do that when I can just run a program that takes care of it all for me? Plus, with Sharetool, you get the added benefit of all your Bonjour services being accessible over WAN or LAN. This means you can do all kinds of sweet stuff from ANYWHERE including:

• listen to your iTunes library
• access your iTunes Home Sharing
• control your home Mac’s screen through VNC
• route your web browsing through your home network for secure browsing anywhere
• grab that presentation you forgot on your home computer
• print on your home network!

Plus, the new version (Sharetool 2) supports running as a background service, proxies, and compression of traffic for optimal browsing!

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a tool to access your home computers securely anywhere in the world, which is easy to setup, Sharetool is your best option. I would consider it an essential addition to any Mac user who travels and wants to stay connected.

Sharetool, by Yazsoft, get it here.

Mac Software, network tools, remote access, secure browsing