getting remote access to your home pc
A handy way of controlling your home PC remotely, is by setting it up as a VNC server. Once installed this will allow to connect remotely from any defined client and have full access to your PC’s resources.
Before installing any software, it it will be worth taking time to ensure that your system is secured as part of this task will involve opening extra network ports. Microsoft provide a very comprenehsive free tool called the Baseline Security Analyzer which will check how secure your password policies are, and whether you have any uncessary background services running. Another useful security hint is to rename your Administrator account – even if someone does gain unauthorised access to your system, hiding the most powerful user by changing its name is an easy quick step that will put off most from doing any sort of damage.
Once you are happy that everything is reasonably tight, next we can install our VN server. In this instance I have used TightVNC. This software is open source, so it won’t cost anything. Configuring this software will require an intermediate knowledge of networking, but there are quite a few useful HOWTOs out there.
If you connect to the internet behind a router then you will need to take some additional steps to setup port forwarding for port 5900 and 5800 (these are the VNC defaults), (and be sure to the same on your firewall too).
Now the reason VNC is widely used and popular, is that it provides easy cross platform connectivity. In this example, the VNC client we have setup here is a Mac, but it could easily be any other type of operating system that connects.
The client software of choice that was selected is Chicken of the VNC. Now most ISPs will provide you with a dynamic IP address – so every time you connect to the internet, your IP address will change. In some cases (and usually an option that will cost extra) your ISP will have provided you with a static IP address – meaning that your IP address will always stay the same. The reason it is important to know the difference, is because the VNC client needs to connect to IP address of the VNC server you have setup. If you are unsure about finding the IP address on your VNC server PC, then navigating to sites such as whatismyip provide it quickly and easily.
Before installing any software, it it will be worth taking time to ensure that your system is secured as part of this task will involve opening extra network ports. Microsoft provide a very comprenehsive free tool called the Baseline Security Analyzer which will check how secure your password policies are, and whether you have any uncessary background services running. Another useful security hint is to rename your Administrator account – even if someone does gain unauthorised access to your system, hiding the most powerful user by changing its name is an easy quick step that will put off most from doing any sort of damage.
Once you are happy that everything is reasonably tight, next we can install our VN server. In this instance I have used TightVNC. This software is open source, so it won’t cost anything. Configuring this software will require an intermediate knowledge of networking, but there are quite a few useful HOWTOs out there.
If you connect to the internet behind a router then you will need to take some additional steps to setup port forwarding for port 5900 and 5800 (these are the VNC defaults), (and be sure to the same on your firewall too).
Now the reason VNC is widely used and popular, is that it provides easy cross platform connectivity. In this example, the VNC client we have setup here is a Mac, but it could easily be any other type of operating system that connects.
The client software of choice that was selected is Chicken of the VNC. Now most ISPs will provide you with a dynamic IP address – so every time you connect to the internet, your IP address will change. In some cases (and usually an option that will cost extra) your ISP will have provided you with a static IP address – meaning that your IP address will always stay the same. The reason it is important to know the difference, is because the VNC client needs to connect to IP address of the VNC server you have setup. If you are unsure about finding the IP address on your VNC server PC, then navigating to sites such as whatismyip provide it quickly and easily.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, September 28, 2005 at 4:48 pm.
