Remote access to Mac over Wi-fi

[Koldov]

Probably a simple question, but as I'm not a Mac user please give a simple answer if you can...

 

We have a Mac mini in the server room, it doesn't do a lot (it was originally used for supervising iPads and content caching iOS updates).

 

Now I am looking to team NICs on my windows servers and need the ethernet port it is using.

 

I have enabled Wi-Fi and given it an IP address etc. But I just can't seem to connect to it with the VNC I use to connect to it over ethernet and I can't ping it (running the 'network utility' and pinging out when selecting the Wi-Fi adapter is fine though).

 

Firewall is off, sharing is on (but importantly the sharing screens only state the ethernet IP address)...

 

How do I enable the Wi-Fi IP address in the sharing options?

 

[dobbyit]

I have set up vnc on the mac, use it as a print server for sending photos from ipads to network. I have to add myself as an admin network/myusername and then authenticate. I have the mac as a static ipaddress

I also turned on network discovery

[AntonioRocco]

Which VNC viewer are you using? If you're using something like RealVNC or TightVNC from a PC then you must enable the "VNC viewers may control screen with password" setting in the Computer Settings section when enabling Remote Management. Don't use the same local admin user's password. You may also have to tweak colour and resolution settings on your VNC viewer when attempting to make the connection. Even then YMMV.

 

I think your other problem is probably network related? Most enterprise/school networks don't routinely route VNC traffic from wired subnets to wireless ones. That would explain why you can't ping etc. I would investigate this first before looking at a potential hardware issue.

 

Antonio Rocco (ASCA)

Edited May 5, 2021 by AntonioRocco

[Koldov]

Thanks!

 

As for an update, the VPN was working fine (as it always had on Ethernet) so there was no problem with the Mac or the VPN settings.

 

For some reason it wasn't allowing me to set my preferred static IP and I had to allow it to DCHP and once that was set, I could connect using that IP.

 

We have a set range on the switches that should have been OK to set as static, but it just wouldn't let me connect with VNC even though it could ping out etc...

 

Yes, possibly a network/switch issue, but it doesn't explain why it was happy once allowed to use DCHP... Unfortunately we don't manage the network so it will be a pain trying to find out what the problem is.