Someone told me that the only way for me to connect to my home computer from my laptop was on a vpn. And I would connecting on the internet and not a LAN. I never got a straight answer from anyone on how to connect to my computer or anyone's computer, with their permission of course, when I need to without setting up a vpn. Is it possible and how?

Can anyone help me...Hengris I need you! I tried doing a search, if you must know; I did my homework. :-) I just can't find anything that answers my question.

Hi marioc, please understand we're a free site - and aren't always online.


You can connect both your laptop and your home computer via a LAN while they're in the same room/house.

If you take your laptop out of the house, you will need to connect via a VPN.


For a LAN, you need a router or a switch and 2 lenghts of UTP patch cable (commonly refered to as Cat5 or Ethernet). Plug 'em in, and it should automatically do the rest.

Excuse my impatience! But I don't quite understand what you're saying cuz I hear people all the time say that they could connect to their pc at work or home and I'm like, how do they do that without setting up a vpn and using microsoft's remote desktop? And that last thing you said, that totally lost me; I know what you're talking about as far as the cabling go's and everything but not when you mention a router. So basically you're saying they need to be on the same network in order for me to connect to each computer using remote desktop?!

Hi Marioc,

If you're wanting to connect to your home computer from work - then yes, you will need a VPN connection.

If you want to connect over remote desktop over LAN - this works without the use of VPN.

I apologise for my original post being a bit cryptic, but your original question lacked the information about connection from work.

Can you explain to me the difference and how can I work it out?

No problems.


I'm at work at present, so i can't really explain the difference...but i can point you to a couple of links that will explain it better then i can.
VPN: Virtual private network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
LAN: Local area network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia