Hi MacDaddy,
Thanks for your post.
Please take a look the comments below:
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1) Is this design the best practice for a casual/intermittent use case?
It's a common usage and NeoRouter solution will meet your requirements for sure.
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2) Will the NR client maintain the outside IP address if the ISP provides a different IP address on lease expiration?
Yes. Whenever NR client can reach the NR server, it will be fine. No matter public IP gets changed or NR client moved to a new place, NR client will handle it.
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3) Will the absence of the NR server instance have adverse impact on the clients?
Yes. Once NR server goes down, all NR clients will be disconnected from the server and keep retrying connect. At the moment your NR network is not usable.
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4) Is it better to give all my friends their own logins or just log their boxes in with my own credentials and uncheck password box? (intent is to run headless and most of them aren't the most computer literate).
It depends. In your case, it's ok to share one credentials, as you just want to remotely control those machines. Once you sign in to NR server successfully, the machine gets registered and it will be connected automatically.If you use NR Pro and want to control the music stream service, you may want to consider about using different NR accounts .
5) If I have my NR server instance offline for a period of time, how long does it take for the NR clients to "discover" it's back online?
It depends. If your server goes offline, NR clients will be offline immediately. When your server goes online ( without public IP changes), NR clients will discover it and back online in a minute.
Thanks,
KevinZ - NeoRouter team