Accessing Foldr remotely / outside of your organisation’s network

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Whilst Foldr is often installed as an on premise component of your network, most users expect anytime, anywhere access to their files.

Configuring external access to the Foldr Server allows users to work remotely as if they were on the school/company network from anywhere with an internet connection.

In this article we explain the options available for configuring remote access to your Foldr Server.

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Public IP

The most straight-forward method to provide remote access to Foldr is via public IP. 

Instructions

1. First, request a new, static, public IP address from your Internet service provider.
2. Next, configure your firewall to route connections from this public IP address to the internal IP address of the Foldr virtual appliance. The only port that needs to be opened is TCP 443 (for HTTPS), however we recommend that TCP port 80 (HTTP) is also opened for users convenience and to allow the use of the free SSL certificates offered through Let’s Encrypt.  If port 80 is not opened, all users will be forced to enter ‘https://’ into a web browser to initiate a connection.  For security reasons, all sessions initiated on HTTP are automatically redirected to HTTPS.
3. Finally, create an external DNS host (A) record for ‘foldr’ on the organisation’s public domain.  The host record should resolve to your newly created static, public IP address. The external DNS for your public domain is most likely handled by whoever manages your website hosting.
4. Users can now connect to Foldr remotely using a memorable and universally accessible address such as foldr.yourdomain.org 

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Reverse Proxy

You can also provide external access via a reverse proxy / web publishing service should you have one available on your network.  A reverse proxy allows you to present multiple internal services via one dedicated IP address.

As the web publishing service / reverse proxy routes connections to the Foldr Server, a dedicated public IP address is not required.

Integration guide for Microsoft’s TMG or ISA reverse proxy.   Foldr has also been tested against Microsoft’s ARR reverse proxy and also the Nginx reverse proxy running on Linux systems.

 

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Port Forwarding

An option for smaller environments is to configure port forwarding on your router/firewall.

Configure inbound TCP 443 and TCP 80 (for HTTPS and HTTP respectively) requests to be forwarded to the internal address of your Foldr Server.

When using this option, only one service within your the network can use HTTPS externally and as such it is not suitable for environments that might be running web servers or web mail.

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Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Foldr can be accessed through an existing VPN should you have one installed on your network.

Remote workers can use the same Foldr connection details as they would if they were on the organisation’s internal network.