Remote desktop to home from work / VPN / Dyn / ...? Occasionally I’d like to connect to my home computer from my work computer. Both run Yosemite. 

I’d like to do this using Remote Desktop, as in I’d like to be able to run all programs on my home computer as if I was sitting behind it (view my Desktop, and access and run all my apps)

At work most outgoing connections are blocked. Can I get around this by using a paid VPN service whenever I want to connect to home? I have no experience with VPNs but do understand the concept and since I have admin rights on my machine I must be able to set one up.

Once the VPN is up and running I guess I can use any Remote Desktop app to connect to home?

Then the next question is that I probably need a fixed IP address or hostname at home, since I’m on a residential DSL connection that periodically changes IP. Would DynDNS help me with that? I see that Dyn also has a Remote Access product - would that let me see my desktop and run apps, or only access my files?

Can anyone confirm if this general overview is correct and possibly recommend a good VPN service and remote desktop app for this type of scenario? 



I don't want to use iCloud!
I have personally used TeamViewer.


No need for a VPN or DDNS
Free for Personal Use
Works on Mac, Windows, Linux, Andrioid, etc.
Substantially faster than VNC


With a VPN, you run into the issue of it either being blocked by your company's firewall or if it is a SSL VPN, you either have to pay for the service or spend a lot of time and effort setting it up - it's quite complex and not something that is baked into consumer grade routers.

DDNS or Dynamic DNS can be done quite easily and it's fairly cheap, but it's not required.

I have found that TeamViewer performs much faster than VNC which is choppy and lags quite a bit over remote connections.  It also dosen't have all the hassles associated with VPN connectivity and there is even a USB version that you can run without having to install (meaning you can put TeamViewer on a USB stick and run it from any computer with Internet)