Connect 2 Leopard iMacs through the Internet?

[isthisonetaken]

Hi all,

I have a 24" Aluminum iMac at my apartment when I'm going to school running 10.5.1. My parents have a 20" iMac running 10.5.1. Is there anyway to get them to connect, so that I could have a folder on my iMac, and they could get into it from their iMac and put in or take out files? If there is a way to do it, is it also possible to set it up so that I don't need to be at my computer for them to get the files, but they can just connect whenever and get or send files as needed?

Thanks for the help.

 

[EricNau]

It requires .Mac (so, ~$100/year) but it sounds like Back to My Mac is exactly what you need.

 

[motulist]

There are several ways to do it that wouldn't require a .mac purchase. If you have a static IP address on your net connection then the best way would be to just turn on file sharing on you computer. Then your folks could just mount your disk on their desktop.

 

[isthisonetaken]

There are several ways to do it that wouldn't require a .mac purchase. If you have a static IP address on your net connection then the best way would be to just turn on file sharing on you computer. Then your folks could just mount your disk on their desktop.

We're both running the internet through a router and have dynamic ips assigned to us. What are the other ways?

I do have a .mac account myself? Also, is there a way to wake my other iMac up, as we never turn off our machines, but we have them go to sleep. Is there a way, maybe through ssh to wake the computer up so Back to my Mac will work?

 

[motulist]

If you both have dynamic IPs then I don't know any methods for you that wouldn't be a kludge, like setting up a script to automatically email them your current IP address whenever it changes.

 

[GroovyLinuxGuy]

If you have a dynamic ip address, you can subscribe to a dynamic dns providers (no-ip.com, dyndns...etc). This way you don't have to try and remember your ip when you want to connect and it will automatically update the ip address (if your router supports this). The service is free for a basic subsctiption. Then all you have to do is remember the url that you chose.