Access Your PC from the Road
- Tuesday, January 13, 2004Accessing your home computer from the road can be a little tricky. The job gets more difficult if you're using a router. Here's how to get the job done and not lose your sanity in the process.
To get started, you'll need a remote viewing software, called VNC (virtual network connection). It's two peices of software, a server and a client. The server software runs on your home computer; the client software runs on the computer you're sitting in front of. I use RealVNC. It's simple and free. Download the Windows installation package from here. During the install on your home computer, say yes to install the server software as a service. That means VNC will start automatically when the computer starts and can not be turned off by mistake.
You also need to tell your router to forward the external VNC requests to the right computer on your home network. Because your router is the only hardware visable from the internet, when you attempt to connect to your home computer using VNC, you'll actually be sending the request to the router. When you set up Port Forwarding on the router, the router will know which computer to send the VNC requests to. RealVNC uses ports 5800 through 5900 to make the connection. So, on your router set those ports to forward to the internal IP address of your home computer.
Next install RealVNC on your remote computer. After the install, run the start the RealVNC Viewer. When you run the viewer, it'll ask for the name of the server, which is your IP address. You don't need to mess around with a port number, just enter the IP address.
But, more than likely, you get a dynamic IP address from your ISP (internet service provider). That means your address will change every couple of days. Oh joy! If you're going to connect remotely, you'll need to get a handle on this. I'm testing a program called IP Monitor which runs on your home computer and will check every few minutes to see if your external IP address has changed. If it has, it'll email you the new address. So far, it's worked great. It's shareware, so you can download it for free for a 30 day trial. A full license is $20. If you want to see your external IP address now, just click go to www.WhatIsMyIP.com
Update: I'm taking a pass on IP Monitor. Half-way through the trial period the program started poping up a message about purchasing it. I think it was a program bug. Even though I received a nice offer to extend my trial, I've decided to try some other options for handling my dynamic IP issues.
posted by Kevin Watts | 
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