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So you've got
VNC installed and you still can't remote control your mac from
outside your network?
Don't be embarrassed, about 100 people have chatted
me and they all have the same problem. They are on a closed
network. In most cases this is a shared connection thru either
and Airport base station or a cable/dsl router. You are perfectly
capable of using VNC inside their own network, but when they
try to get back home from far away....no dice.
I am going to use an Airport base station as
my router, but if you have a Linksys, netgear or other router,
the concept is the same.
Step one: Lets see if VNC can even be seen from
the outside world. go to http://www.dslreports.com/scan
(Yea.
Yea. Its a bit ugly and the java redraws don't particularly
love safari...but it works wel.l)
MAKE SURE YOU DO THIS FROM THE MACHINE THAT YOU
WANT TO REMOTE CONTROL VIA VNC!!!
Hit the 'Probe' Button. It will
grind away for a few minutes. What
the
application
is
doing is seeing which ports is can get answers from. Remember
we want port 5900.
When the results button pops up, it means the
port scan is done. It can take a few minutes. Hit the 'results'
button!
We want is to find that TCP port 5900 is
OPEN. This means that traffic on port 5900 is getting all the
way to the mac you are scanning (an wish to control via VNC)
. If this fails you will not get VNC to work.
This is the result we want. TCP 5900 is open.
If there is a problem
you will not see
TCP 5900. This means that Chicken of the VNC cannot get
past your router to the proper computer.
Step 2: Route the traffic from your Airport
to your mac. Open up the AirPort Admin Utility. Apple puts
it in your /Applications/Utilities
folder
by default.
We want to configure the Airport in question to do this
.
First of all we don't want the IP of your mac
to change, so set the DHCP lease to 9999 days (This
means that for the next 9999 days (27 + years) any time your
mac is
hooked up it should get the same IP address from the router.
(Minor side note: if you change the connection from Wifi to
Ethernet
you probably will get a new IP address)
Now get the IP of your mac.
Open up the Network System Preferences.
l
In my case, my IP address is 10.0.1.2 . (this
is my local IP address. It is only goos inside my LAN)
Now go back to AirPort Admin Utility and click on the Port
Mapping Tab
. What we need to accomplish here is the routing of any request that reach
the router on Port 5900 to get passed to the mac at 10.0.1.2
wihtout changing the port. Click the add button. (If you are
not using
an airport you can usually find Port forwarding
on you router, but it won't look like this)
Now you are all set up. But what is the IP Of
the mac? It is not 10.0.1.2. Thats an
IP address reserved for use only inside of LANs There are
thousands of computers out there with 10.0.X.X. address. The
Answer? Go to http://www.whatismyip.com and
it will tell you what your IP is!
Throw open Chicken of the VNC on a remote mac
and use the IP as your host and you are done
.
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