home user, VPN + wake on LAN?

[sentofuno]

hi all

i was wondering if an idea i have is possible or feasable. i have a windows machine with a lot of data i and some friends and work collegues could do with having available. the thing is its quite a power hungry machine and i don't like leaving it on for cost and enviromental reasons. also i don't know a great deal about VPN security but i know linux is highly regarded as near-bombproof.

would it be possible to have a linux machine as a VPN server that can turn on the windows machine with wake on LAN? the setup would be:

ADSL router with VPN --> linux machine --> windows machine

say if i set up an account for logging on to linux which allows anyone to access shares on windows but make windows insist on a login too, or maybe remote desktop? ideally:

login as eg user 'remote' password 'password' on linux, then user 'individual user name' password 'individual password'. or in other words everyone logs into linux as the same (except for myself as another account) and then in to windows as each person set up in windows.


sorry if this makes no sense, its just an idea i had today. also if anyone could give me any advice on which would be better, ~£20 per year for dynDNS or £5 per month for a static IP from my ISP. is the static IP worth the extra cost?

thanks in advance

[brother_mick]

IMHO: If you are going to have a lot of people use your server then I`d go for the static,it could be a lot of hassle mailing everyone to tell them the new IP address everytime it changes.