Summary

This document is intended for end users of redistributable web-enabled software that relies on HttpVPN™ for getting accessible on the Internet right after the installation. This document explains, step-by-step, how to acquire, install and operate redistributable web-enabled apps.

Redistributable HttpVPN-Enabled Web Apps Basics

HttpVPN Portal, www.MyOwnSecureWeb.com, is the place where independent software vendors sell, or offer for free, their redistributable and easily-installable web software for households and small businesses. These software applications, or apps, are combining ease of installation and operations of regular desktop software with ultimate accessibility of web sites, making your software securely accessible to you and people you authorize from anywhere in the world. All you need to operate HttpVPN-enabled web apps is a computer that is up & running at all times with permanent UNMETERD or UNLIMITED broadband Internet connection.

After you will have ordered either free or paid-for app at the Portal, an order record will be created in HttpVPN system as a proof of legitimate software purchase, against which future installation of the product will be matched to ensure that you install genuine software and that vendor's rights are protected. Therefore please be sure to avoid getting HttpVPN-enabled software from sources other than HttpVPN Portal. HttpVPN-enabled web apps acquired from other sources will lack an order record and therefore such apps will not become accessible on the Web after being installed.

Please note that only applications
legally acquired through the HttpVPN Portal will be accessible on the web.

Acquiring HttpVPN-Enabled Web Apps

If you have already ordered and downloaded an app from the Web App Store, please skip this chapter and go directly to the Installation walk-through.

To get HttpVPN-enabled software for your home or business, you will need to go through the ordering process, even for free software. This walk-through will use free "Residential Router Access" application as an example, to show how web apps get ordered and downloaded. Once downloaded and installed, this app makes your router/firewall device management page accessible to you, and you only, on the Internet at the HttpVPN Portal.

To start, navigate either to HttpVPN Portal home page or to HttpVPN Web App Store, and in the Web App Store list find "Residential Router Access" app made by UltiDev LLC:

Click the "Residential Router Access" link to start ordering process.

You will land at the product detail page, consisting of three parts:

• Top, with application name, vendor name and brief description of what this app does.
  
• Left, with the list of target destination platforms for which this app is available. In this sample there only one target platform that covers all recent Windows flavors. If there is only one target platform available, it will be automatically selected, and product details for this platform will be automatically displayed. If there are more than one target platforms in the list (may be one for Windows XP, another for Vista, and yet another for Linux), then right part of the screen will be blank until you select target platform from the list on the left.
  
• Right, with the product detail, like application version, price and feature list. In order for this part to be visible, a target platform must be selected from the list on the left.

The price for the product in this sample is quoted as Free. Non-free products will have a regular US Dollars price listed instead, as well as, if you are already logged in, it may show discounted upgrade prices, and if you are not yet logged in, it will offer you to log in and let you see whether you are eligible for special pricing. Upgrade prices may be available only to those who have already purchased either eligible earlier versions of the product, or have competing apps from other vendors.

Please click Order button. If you were not logged in, you will be taken to the login page and back. The product in this sample walk-through is free, so you won't have to go through the entire checkout and payment process. Instead you will get this message:

Click Continue button.

You will land at the Portal home page, which will now have this record on the left part of the screen:

That is the order record and a software download link you will use when installing the app and registering it with the HttpVPN system to make it securely accessible on the Internet at the HttpVPN Portal.

This is it - you are now ready to download and install HttpVPN-enabled web app inside your home or business network!

Installing HttpVPN-Enabled Web App Walk-Through

In order to install any redistributable HttpVPN-enabled web app, you will need to order the app first at the HttpVPN Portal's Web App Store, as described above. You will not be able to make an app accessible on the web if you have not gone through the app ordering process.

To get your just-ordered title up & running, you will need to complete following steps:

1. Download the HttpVPN-enabled web app.
2. Start installation process on the machine that will serve the application, and let HttpVPN Proxy get installed (only if it's not already present).
3. Register the new HttpVPN Proxy or select existing one.
4. Register the app with the HttpVPN system.
5. Start using your new app at www.MyOwnSecureWeb.com.

Here are the detailed instructions for all the steps listed above.

1. Download the HttpVPN-enabled web app.

To start the installation process of the web app you have ordered at the Portal Web App Store, please go to a machine (residing inside your home or business network) that will host the app, and from that machine please log in to the HttpVPN Portal home page.

Your Portal home page should have a list of apps you have ordered and can install - please see the screenshot above. Click Download link to download the software you have ordered. Save downloaded installation package and run it to start installation.

2. Launching the Installation.

Once the installation has started, the Router Access app installer will check whether HttpVPN Proxy software, and other prerequisites, like .NET Framework, are installed. In most cases the list of missing components will include only HttpVPN Proxy.

If you do not see this screen, it means that app prerequisites, including HttpVPN Proxy, are already installed on the machine and you may skip froward to the application setup screen. Otherwise click Install button to continue. Clicking Cancel is equal to aborting installation.

HttpVPN Proxy and other prerequisite components are not included in the Residential Router Access app installation package. Instead, the installer will download HttpVPN Proxy from the Internet:

If the installer for some reason failed to download HttpVPN Proxy components, you may download and install HttpVPN Proxy on your own, and restart Router Access app installation. Once HttpVPN Proxy is installed, these three HttpVPN Proxy installation screens will not be shown anymore during the application installation process.

Once installer successfully downloaded HttpVPN Proxy files, which should take only a minute or or two, it will start HttpVPN Proxy software installation:

When you have reached the following screen, it means that either HttpVPN Proxy software has installed successfully, or, if you didn't see the three screens mentioned above, it means HttpVPN Proxy has been already present on this machine.

Click Next button to let the installation run.

Router Access app used as a sample in this walk-through, is not shipped with any actual web-based software. Instead, it finds your residential router's management page, and makes it accessible on the web to you at HttpVPN Portal secure, authenticated and encrypted home page. As a part of the installation flow, the router management page preview will be shown, along with the detected address of the router:

Please note that most of other web applications will not have the kind of screen shown above. Only this particular sample has it.

If your router uses pop-up (Basic) authentication, then instead of the router preview page, you will see the message saying the the router is found, but preview is not displayed due to authentication restrictions. If installer was unable to find the router, you may enter its IP address in the "Enter Router Address Manually" field. Click Yes button to continue.

3. Register the new HttpVPN Proxy or select existing one.

The purpose of the next step is to select an HttpVPN Proxy that will serve as the secure relay between the app, and the HttpVPN Portal. To do that application installer will kick off application registration process, which starts with asking you to log in to HttpVPN system using your HttpVPN Portal username and password. (This operation is safe - your credentials will be sent to the Portal for authentication over a fully-encrypted 128-bit SSL channel.)

HttpVPN needs to know who you are in order to either let you associate a new HttpVPN Proxy with your account, or to retrieve the list of your existing proxies and let you select one of them for hosting the app.

After you have successfully logged in, you will be reminded that your web apps can only work when the machines hosting both the app and the Proxy are on. Although it may seem obvious, but most people are used to shutting down the machine overnight. Web apps, in order to be useful, should be on 24x7, and your Internet connection should be either unlimited or unmeterd, because hosting web applications will increase your internet traffic even when you are not surfing the web.

This point is where you create an identity for the HttpVPN Proxy hosting your app(s). The following screenshot show the situation when a user does not have any proxies inside the local network, and the only option is to create one. It's very simple: just provide a name and click OK. Please be sure to supply a name for the Proxy that is meaningful not only for you, but also to your friends, family and other people whom you may invite to access other future applications hosted by this Proxy.

Click OK and wait a few moments - HttpVPN will need a few moments to do some advanced back-and-forth with the Portal, establishing trust between your Proxy, your account, and the Portal.

When you see this screen, it means that your Proxy was successfully created and registered for this network.

4. Register the app with the HttpVPN system.

Now both HttpVPN Proxy software and the app itself are installed, and all that is left to do is to register the application itself with the Proxy you have just created. That's what the next screen is for. As we mentioned above, in order to make a redistributable HttpVPN-enabled web application accessible on the Web, the app has to be ordered prior to being installed. The application registration at this point is looking for the app order record on your Portal account that matches the web app release you are installing. This is how HttpVPN ensures that you are installing a legitimate copy of the web app. This screen shot shows two order records: the first one, in the "Not installed purchases" list is available for registration. The second one has already been registered during installation of another instance of Router Access app. Click Select link to tie the first order record with this instance of installed Router Access app.

Although there are a couple more steps to this process, at this point your application is registered.

Next screen allows you to modify some application parameters, most important of which is shared access settings. In this particular case, you probably don't want to share access to the Router Access path with anybody.
Therefore, simply click Save App's Settings button to continue. Access to less sensitive applications could be shared with friends, family, colleagues, and other trusted parties. For more information about sharing secure web access to your app, please click this link.

Click Save App's Settings to move on the final step of the application registration process.

And you have arrived!

Close this message box and enjoy secure access to your new app from anywhere in the world!

5. Start using your new app at the HttpVPN Internet Portal!

Now when you log in to the Portal home page, you will see the link to your application.

Please note that it may take about a minute for the application
to become accessible after being registered.

Please wait about a minute after after finishing application registration process, and then click the link highlighted on the screenshot above to be able to manager your router from anywhere in the world. If your router management page requires authentication, an authentication dialog asking for your credentials will pop up. If that happens, please note that pop-up authentication dialog is asking you for the username and password defined by the router, not the Portal credentials.

If you have cancelled applicaiton registration flow before completing it, please look in Windows' Programs menu - HttpVPN applications guideline recommend that application vendors create shortcuts allowing restarting the process of application registration with HttpVPN.

If you had any troubles during the application registration process, please let us know, and we'll do our best to help you ASAP.

Enjoy your own secure web!

Useful Links and Further Reading

[Applications' compatibility, performance and security]
[Download latest HttpVPN Proxy software]