VNC newbie... Can help?

[whyrichard]

Hello,

I've just begun using VNC viewer and VNC (whatever program goes on the "controlled" computer).


i've gotten it to work fine on an internal airport network. however yesterday i tried attempting to control the house computer from outside the network at my friend's house (using dialup). and of course it didn't work.


in my VNCViewer Hostname field I have [name of computer].local

and it works fine from within the network.


perhaps my question is, what do i put in this field to access the house computer from outside?

the ip address of the house computer?
what about DHCP? i'm using cable internet and DHCP --doesn't that mean the ip address changes all the time?

-and if it does, is there some way that i can have the home computer communicate it's present ip address to me when i'm not at home?




am i even making any sense?

help is very apprecieated. thank you mac community!


r.

 

[jeremy.king]

yes you want to use your home IP, and you are right about DHCP.

Do you have high-speed at home? I find with my ISP - Roadrunner - that my IP rarely changes as I leave my modem always on and connected to a router. If you find yours changes often, there are many routers that support dynamic IP services such as http://www.dyndns.org/. In a nutshell, the router communicates with DynDNS and broadcasts the changes to your home IP to DynDNS. Then you can then use subdomain of the hundreds of domain names they offer (e.g. yoursite.dynalias.com or something of your liking) to contact your home computer. Of course if you go the router route, you will need to setup port forwarding correctly.

Long story short, you can leave your modem on and see if you IP changes when the IP lease renews. If it does, consider a router that supports a dynamic IP service and it will make your life much easier after you set it up.

 

[Muskie]

I am having a problem too. I've never used vnc myself, but i've been with my friend while he's used it from a computer at the community college to play with his computer at home. Yesterday I tried getting it to work with another friend of mine. He just got his new G4, and I was gonna try and watch him mess around or play some games or something from from my computer over VNC (I know, it probably would look like ****, if it even worked at all, to view a game like that). Neither of us can seem to connect to eachother though. We both have VNC and Viewer, and each time either of us tried to connect to the other we get: "Connectiong Error. Exception connecting to XX.XXX.XXX.XXX:XXXX: Connection refused"

Neither of us knows why thats happening. Any help would be nice. Thanks

 

[realityisterror]

well if the server (the computer being watched/controlled) is behind a router, and you are not behind the same router, you're going to have issues...
suppose you are at work, and you want to connect to your computer at home if you just have one computer connected straight to the wall, then type in the address and/or password at work and connect...
if your home computer is behind a router, then you're not going to be able to connect... you have two solutions: plug that computer directly into the wall temporarily or.... look around in your router's settings (using airport admin utility or the "webpage" that's built into your router i.e. type in 192.168.0.1, or w/e the address is, into safari) for something called DMZ (demilitarized zone). what this does is it exposes one computer so it seems that that one computer has the ip address and not the router... i'm pretty sure most linksys and dlink router's can do this (my DI-614+ does)
on my dlink, you need to type in the address of the computer on your network (ie 192.168.0.xxx) in order to enable the DMZ, so it may be useful to also look for a Static DHCP setting that always assigns the same address to a certain MAC address... then, as computers connect and disconnect, only that one computer will remain "in the DMZ"...

after you've done this, fire up the server, and plug in the address and/or password on the other end... you don't need to use a DMZ if you are the client (the person not the server )

hope this helps, and if anyone knows if airport base stations support DMZ and/or static DHCP, it'd be great to know...

reality

 

[Muskie]

well, we're both using airport extreme. i couldnt find any DMZ stuff in the airport admin util. and typing my ip into safari doesnt do anything. so.. now im lost... heh. what should i/we do?

 

[realityisterror]

so typing 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 don't do anything? you'd expect such an expensive basestation to have more features than my $69 alternative...


if you can't find it, then i guess your only alternative is to plug straight into the wall...

reality

 

[Muskie]

so typing 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 don't do anything? you'd expect such an expensive basestation to have more features than my $69 alternative...


if you can't find it, then i guess your only alternative is to plug straight into the wall...

reality

alright. thanks anyway.