Backburner over WAN?

[AJLynn]

I have a laptop and a desktop, both with Quadro4 video but the desktop is a good bit faster for rendering. The desktop is at home on a LAN behind a wired/wireless router leased from the cable company - I prefer having my own router so I can control it, but my roommates had this setup before I moved in and I gave my Linksys to my sister. The laptop goes with me, to work now in the summer but to my studio on campus when school is in session.

 

When I'm in studio in the fall, working on my thesis, I'd like to be able to send my render jobs home and free up the laptop - after my first semester here, doing stupid things like 50-hour renders on the laptop because that's what I had in studio and my professor wanted everything on 30x40 boards, I learned my lesson.

 

The question is: what am I going to need to do? Is it simply a matter of getting my own router, assigning a static IP to the desktop, opening certain ports, giving Bacburner on my laptop the WAN IP address of the router and using FTP to collect the finished renders? (Okay, that doesn't sound simple, but it is Does Backburner rely on Windows file sharing and stuff like that, or is it done on TCP/IP alone? And can I do things like set the file path for the finished work to c:\netrender in the Max render dialog and have that directory exist on both computers? Better yet, can I set it to, say, \\centralperk\SharedDocs\netrender, even though the laptop does not see centralperk over Windows networking, and then bribe my roommates to let me put minimal Max installs on their computers and have a small render fam going for finals? Or am I going to need a VPN, which would make things much more complicated?

[JamesTaylor]

i would also be very interested in the results of Backburner over WAN as i could also obtain extra rendering machines via this method.

 

in this scenario would it even be possible to use VRay's DR over WAN or would the interconnection speed be to restrictive?

[voltaire_ira]

Backburner works using WAN since we used my laptop to render an animation before using a WAN connected to renderfarm usin LAN. i didnt handle the setup so i cant explain how we did it but its possible. Backburner searches for slaves using the subnet mask and the ports used.

[abicalho]

Andrew,

 

BB could work over the Internet using a Manager that's somewhere else, and then saving files locally. But for that you'd have to open quite a lot of ports, pretty much making your network insecure. The Manager would have to be in a known IP, and the router would have to send all incoming packages to that system.

 

I'd suggest setting up 2 BB networks, one for each "zone", and then sending the job to be rendered in both. You could setup one local share to collect the files and then send them over through FTP, thus reducing the number of ports open. You could use VNC to connect to remote control the systems on the other network, making things rather easier.

 

Hope these ideas help you,

 

-Alexander

[jucaro]

Setup a VPN connection to your WAN connecting your laptop wherever you are as long there is an internet connection since your IP is static(i assume). This way you will be sending render jobs to your network as if you were connected locally.

 

VPN is not that complicated to setup. The RDP way is ok but youre going to have to change your workflow a bit.

 

Personally, i like the VPN setup. i just dial to the VPN server and render away.

 

 

 

Alex

 

A web browser enabled Backburner Monitor would be a nice addition to MAX. Much like the web browser enabled MS Remote Desktop client.

[AJLynn]

Thanks all. I think I'll probably go the VPN route, it sounds simpler and more secure.

[mtutaj]

what kind of VPN would you guys recommend? Hardware would be the ideal, but what software options are the best?

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

[mtutaj]

did anyone get a solution to this?