vnc

Creamy Goodness

i have real vnc installed on my pc at home (where i'm currently at) and would like to be able to when in college connect to my pc at home and drag files over to my college pc.

now i got vnc working between my laptop and pc and you have to enter in a password and all to get in (wow i hear you say ) i also entered in my ip address which i got from www.whatismyip.com on the pc. but my question is, is this the only way of finding the ip? as my ISP changes my ip every so often do i have to check my ip before i leave for college? if this is the case i can see this as more pain than it's worth.

any help is appreciated.

Snowbat

The usual solution for this is to register a subdomain at a free dynamic DNS service such as DynDNS. You run a client which monitors your current IP address and updates (for example) cremo.dyndns.com so it always points to your current IP address. From the internet you connect to cremo.dyndns.com.

Some home routers have onboard clients for dyndns.com, tzo.com, zoneedit.com and others.

JackKelly

Depending on your college, you may have problems connecting from behind a proxy. The ports that vnc use (5900/5901) may well be blocked. It is a little trickier if this is the case. Sure try it out first and see what happens.

Creamy Goodness

just noticed that on my linksys WAG353 has that the client for dyndns.com so i got that working, didn't think it would be that simple.

i don't think i'll have problems college side as the pc's use an image everytime you log in and vnc viewer is installed, so i was assuming that if they've got it installed on the image that it must have the ports open.

i'll try it in college some time tomorrow.

thanks for the help guys

L31mr0d

contact the sysadmin for the college and ask if they have a means of setting up your college share as a mapped network drive over VPN for your home pc, this will be an altogether faster solution, although the problem of your transient IP at home will mean you will still have to use a dynamic IP service when connecting from college.

Some colleges will offer this facility, although whether or not it is restricted to staff only you'll have to ascertain. But a VPN mapped network drive will allow you to just drag and drop your college files straight onto your home pc, which is a lot more convenient.

Hobbes

Cremo wrote:

just noticed that on my linksys WAG353 has that the client for dyndns.com so i got that working, didn't think it would be that simple.

It shouldn't be. You need to set up the port forwarding as well. Basically in the router you tell it if anything connects to router on port X then route the traffic to machine Y on port Z.

I would recommend not using the default VNC port as that routinely gets hit on the net and VNC isn't that overly secure. You might be better going with Remote Desktop.

If you want to access files just from your home machine you can use ORB. http://www.orb.com/fr/front_page

I've never used it but a friend does. Think it may be only 1 way though.

runswithascript

Mentioning it to the admins in college might risk them making sure you can never do this?

Cryos

http://www.logmein.com

Pro pack lets you transfere files.

far2gud

dusf wrote:

Mentioning it to the admins in college might risk them making sure you can never do this?

Damn right

Gadgetman496

Cremo wrote:

is this the only way of finding the ip? as my ISP changes my ip every so often do i have to check my ip before i leave for college? if this is the case i can see this as more pain than it's worth.

any help is appreciated.

Another option is this,

Install a Prog called "IPMailer"
this will send an email containing your new IP to any predefined email address whenever your IP changes, it also has a stealth feature so you don't even know it's there. Another thing you can do with this is to use a Mobile email address (i.e. Vodafone) so that you get a SMS too, everytime your IP changes.

Might sound a bit awkward but it is easy to setup & it does work & once it's done, it's done.

Just another option.

-

Creamy Goodness

sorry should of stated in my original post that i need to be able to control the pc.

start torrents downloading and SETI and stuff

snappieT

Here's the way it works for me (TCD)

I have VNC running on the PC, and in the NAT table on the router, I have a forward from external port 995 to internal port 5900 on the host PC. 995 is used for secure mail or something, and most colleges (TCD anyway, I would imagine a lot of them would) have it open. Then I just connect to <IPADDRESS>::995 from within trinity and can VNC in.

Do you have access to a shell? Is there a netsoc in whatever college you're in? If so, you can portforward, which will always work, plus it'll all be over a secure connection. If you have portforwarding working, then you can also enter something into a NAT table that allows external access to a samba share on the machine at home. Make sure you put a password on the share, and put it on a random port, not the standard SMB port.

Any questions, please PM!