Pair from separate network or through VPN

[Albert Vaca]

Hello Achilleas,

Sorry for the long absence. Have you made any progress on this? Did you
manage to solve the problems with the pairing? Actually KDE Connect should
listen to the VPN interface, but you may have to restart it.

Regards,
Albert


On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 3:16 PM, Achilleas Koutsou <achilleas.k at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Greetings all,
>
> New guy here.
>
> I've been slowly working on implementing a new feature for KDE connect
> that will allow two devices to communicate through separate networks or
> through an alternative or non-local network (such as a VPN).
> Specifically, I wanted to address Bug 326509 [1] (feature request).
>
> My initial attempt started by adding a new backend for handling
> connections through VPNs automatically. There are two problems with this
> approach:
> - In order to be a general solution, it would have to accommodate all
> types of VPNs and VPN interfaces.
> - Some VPNs, e.g., OpenVPN in routing mode configured as a tunnel with a
> tun interface, don't allow broadcast packets, which is necessary for KDE
> Connect to work.
>
> My current approach is to add a new backend and menu for manually
> specifying IP addresses of foreign devices. This can also accommodate
> hostnames and non-standard port numbers. This was actually Albert Vaca's
> original idea which he shared with me when I first contacted him about
> working on this issue. Given the nature of KDE Connect, specifically the
> fact that it's designed and meant to Just Work, the manual IP input
> interface should probably be hidden in an advanced menu.
>
> So far, I've forked the repositories to my GitHub account (both KDE [2]
> and Android [3] repositories). On the Android side, I've got a few
> things working, mostly hard coded hacks as proof of concept. Specifying
> the VPN IP of my desktop in the Android app actually works, but the
> pairing is a bit flaky, probably because the KDE side isn't listening on
> the VPN interface (?).
>
> In general, when I'm finished with this, it should be possible to pair
> and connect two devices that aren't on the same network or when
> broadcast isn't possible, as long as the two devices are able to
> communicate with one another. This should also work when a device is
> behind a NAT/firewall, as long as the specified port is forwarded
> appropriately.
>
> This message is intended both as an introduction for myself, to let you
> know how I'm thinking about the problem, see if there's anything I
> missed about how the connectivity should (or could) work and to ask if
> anyone else has any ideas for solving this issue.
>
> So, what do you all think?
>
> Cheers.
>
> --
> Achilleas
>
>
> [1] - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=326509
> [2] - https://github.com/achilleas-k/kdeconnect-kde
> [3] - https://github.com/achilleas-k/kdeconnect-android/tree/manualip
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