mstsc to home machines that are behind a router

[mac_shinobi]

I get about port forwarding on the router to allow the traffic to go through the relevant ports for mstsc and also changing the default listening port for mstsc as per here :

 

http://haacked.com/archive/2006/10/17/Remote_Desktop_On_A_NonStandard_Port.aspx

 

What I would like to know is if I have more then one machine ie 3 machines that all have remote desktop / assistance enabled and I was at work how would you connect to a specific one ie

 

Machines at home :

 

PC1

PC2

PC3

 

Say I want to connect to PC1 and PC2 at home, what would I put in the mstsc to connect to specific machines at home ?

[DMcCoy]

You would need to forward to them on different ports.

 

So you forward:

external ip:port1 to internal ip:port1

external ip:port2 to internal ip:port2

 

You can also forward them all to 3389 but have different external ports, but I know my cheap dsl router doesn't do that.

 

Then you just connect with externalip:portX when connecting from outside.

[OutToLunch]

You'd have to use a different remote port for each PC, and forward each port (or the port range depending on your router) to the correct PC.

 

So for example PC1 on 2000

PC2 on 2001

PC3 on 2002

 

Then you just use homeip:2001 / homeip:2002 etc in the remote desktop client.

 

That's how you do it - but just a note, I'd be very wary of directly opening up remote desktop to the net, you'd be better off setting up VPN to home, or running an SSH server on a random high numbered port and using SSH tunnels to reach each PC.

[mac_shinobi]

Do you have a tutorial on how to do the above with regards to setting up a VPN or running an ssh server on a random high port etc as mentioned above ?

[Ric_]

IPCOP will forward to different ports than the source port... e.g. forward 6666 to 3389.

 

Another way of course would be to use an ISP that gave you lots of static IPs free of charge (Eclipse Internet are nice like that)

[SimpleSi]

If this is for your home machines just use Logmein on each of them and it'll automagically work without any configuration at all

 

regards

 

Simon

[dancingdruid]

I'd use ssh on a home machine (or even your router if you can run dd-wrt). Use putty to open a tunnel to your machine and then connect over your tunnel.

 

I sometimes use remote desktop this way - works fine and I feel safer leaving SSH open to the Internet than remote desktop.

 

I'd recommend dd-wrt firmware for anyone who has a router based on a compatible chipset - it really is very good.

[Oakie]

I vote for logmein as well. You install a small agent on each home pc. Sign in to your free or paid logmein account on their site. They show the machines that you can log into. You click the one want and in a few seconds you are remote controlling the machine as if you were sitting right in front of it.

 

regarding VPN setup:

On XP machines you can set up a PPTP VPN . START > Control Panel > Network Connections > Create a New Connection > Setup Advanced connection > Accept incoming connections > NEXT > Allow VPN connections. > Check the box of the user name who will be allowed to connect to this machine. This will set that Xp machine to be able to accept incoming VPN connections. You essentially have a no cost VPN server.

 

On your home router / nat box you will have to forward port 1723 to the IP of your XP VPN server machine and 'allow VPN PPTP or L2TP' Passthrough somewhere in the router config. It varies by router, but it's straight forward enough.

 

At work, you get on another XP machine and setup the VPN connection, similar to above except you choose to "connect to a network at my workplace" (that would be your home XP VPN computer).

 

The catch is, you will have to know the WAN IP address at home in order to connect. Likely you have a dynamic WAN IP, so you'll want to sign up for a free dynamic domain service so you can just type in an address "gecko.dynalias.com" for the connection so it will resolve to the correct Wan IP at your house.

 

Once connected, you can map a drive to shared folders on your home computers and transfer files back and forth. After all that, you might find that your home uplink speed and the VPN encryption could turn out to make the connection terribly slow.

 

Alternately, you could use the built in Remote Desktop feature instead. You still need the dynamic domain name service, and this time your forward port 3389 on the router.

 

 

If it were me, I'd do the Logmein deal instead.