So, here's the setup-
Real VNC on a XP machine, natted behind a Netgear router, hooked up to TWC.

VNC is running on the XP box, the router has the ports for VNC open, yet I can't get a connection from anywhere outside my local subnet.

Anythoughts on why?

Fairly sure that the software firewall on the XP box is set up correctly.

I would switch over to the remote windows login (RDP ? I forgot the abbreviation), but I'm worried I"ll have the same connectivity problems.

5/3/2006 9:36:51 AM

Did you disable the windows firewall to ensure its not causing the problems? If you have any other software firewalls in place disable them too and see if it works. And you're sure you opened 5800 and 5900 on the router and have those same ports configured in realvnc? you have the external ip address correct? (found by visiting http://whatismyip.org)

and on my router, I didn't simply open the ports...I forwarded them to my machine (via a static ip i set up). the setup page in the (netgear or dlink) router config i used for that was "virtual server" i think.

and yeah, i would stick with a vnc program for better security. ultra vnc is free and you get encryption vs lack of with the free RealVnc program.

5/3/2006 9:44:18 AM

if you get it working, use RDP. its about 1000x better than vnc

mstsc /console /v:computername

will connect you to the console session of the machine so you can pick up whatever you were working on when you left.

5/3/2006 9:51:29 AM

benefit of VNC is multi-platform use and not having to deal w/ compiling mstsc on another platform

5/3/2006 10:56:58 AM

compiling rdesktop on lunix takes all of about 1 minute and the performance is definately worth it.

5/3/2006 11:03:06 AM

it's a stupid thread, but yeah check firewall...and preferably place your computer in the DMZ instead of just opening certain ports.

5/3/2006 11:36:03 AM

you sure you have your router set up correctly to forward the vnc port (5900 by default) to your machine's IP?

If your router is assigning IP addresses dynamically, perhaps your router isn't forwarding vnc traffic to the correct IP of your machine (b/c it's been assigned another address now?)


I'm the only one of my roommates that uses VNC so I assign myself a static IP address and forward all external VNC traffic to that internal IP

5/3/2006 11:38:48 AM

^
What he said. First time you have a power outage, if you don't have static IPs on your network, can be fun to reconfigure things.

Also, if you have multiple remote desktop computers, look into changing the port number. That way you can say "TCP 3389 goto 192.168.1.2" and "TCP 3390 goto 192.168.1.3" in your router.

5/3/2006 12:04:00 PM