Remote access through a router

[badger]

Here's my set-up:
Broadband through an NTL STB, to a Linksys WR54G wireless router which is then connected via wired ethernet to my main PC.

Until I had the router, I used RealVNC on another machine to connect to my home PC, now it doesn't work. According to the RealVNC server app my IP is a generic 192.168.*.* address but checkmyip.com tells me it hasn't changed from what it was before.

How the bejeezus do I get this working again?

[funnelhead]

i dont know much about this but basically the router assigns you an internal 192.168... address on the lan while adopting your external I.P. itself... when you use realvnc or pcanywhere to try and connect to ur 'old' i.p u just end up trying to connect to the router, which of course doesnt work.

What you need to do is tell the router to pass on these specific connections straight to ur computers I.P....

Now i'm not sure whether you can do this vis port fowarding OR whether you need to have a router which explitly states that it supports "VPN passthrough", vpn being Virtual Private Network. Srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy 3com boxes tend to have this, but i dont know whether you need it in this situation..

[TheAnimus]

google for a guide on port forwarding.

you can just set the 192.168.x.y ip as the DMZ or Deafult Mapping Zone.

Then you just connect to the ip of the router (checkmyip.com tell's u), and it forwards the port to the 192.168.x.y ip

[Moby-Dick]

DMZ or Deafult Mapping Zone

interesting side point , which I suspect I might have mentioned before...when a DMZ isn't a DMZ ( ie when its the "orange" portion of a network also known as a De-Miltarised Zone )

Unusual for network lingo to be ambiguous ( ie one is more secure , one is slightly less )

[kidzer]

I always thought it was De-Militarized Zone, didn't know about the other meaning...cool

[badger]

google for a guide on port forwarding.

you can just set the 192.168.x.y ip as the DMZ or Deafult Mapping Zone.

Then you just connect to the ip of the router (checkmyip.com tell's u), and it forwards the port to the 192.168.x.y ip

This worked perfectly, thanks for your help!

[Howard]

google for a guide on port forwarding.

you can just set the 192.168.x.y ip as the DMZ or Deafult Mapping Zone.

Then you just connect to the ip of the router (checkmyip.com tell's u), and it forwards the port to the 192.168.x.y ip

What?


DMZ = Demilitarised Zone.. I.e a network sitting between the internet and a local network, and usually only being one way traffic

[GDVS]

This worked perfectly, thanks for your help!

Just remember you no longer get the benefit of the router's built in firewall.

[Howard]

Yeah.. Or you could just forward the relevant ports (5900 for VNC) and leave the rest closed...

[TheAnimus]

What?


DMZ = Demilitarised Zone.. I.e a network sitting between the internet and a local network, and usually only being one way traffic

No, what moby said.

Default mapping zone is what most gateways call it, as its where packets go by default.

A NAT gateway has a list of ports and destination IPs, now these things age (300sec iirc spec is standard). If there is no port, and a packet is recived, the gateway forwards it to the DMZ (default mapping zone) hence the name making such sense.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...e%3A+DMZ&meta=

The DMZ in Demilitarised zone, is generally in its own subnet, the idea is its inbetween the internet, and your private network, often both entry points will have firewalls with SPI, a good example of where you might have DMZ'd computers is the coffee lounge in a nice firm, so people can surf the net (not unrestricted) and access parts of the internal lan.

DMZ forwarding is a bit drastic for one port, but it does little harm if the PC itself is secure or set up. Its also important to note that if your using just DMZ mapping, rather than a specific rule for port x, to pc a.b.c.d, then its possible that the NAT gateway will actually use port 5900 for some other comptuer, and some port, and NAT every packet to that other PC, resulting in intermittent operaiton. Hopefully that makes sense if not:

DMZ, quick n dirty
Port Forwarding, time consuming

(IPv4 assumed in this post, which is the current standard for the majority of 'the net')

[Howard]

I know what a Demilitarised Zone is.

I have never heard of a Default Mapping Zone, and google shows up absolutely zero matches about it.

And besides, a firewall wouldn't be doing a very good job if it forwards all packets after a certain time anyway?
It just doesn't make sense to me

[TheAnimus]

its a loverly shared acronym, the first time i came accross it was with a miss-behaving ZyXel, the nice tech person (who actually knew his stuff, the firmware on this one was messed), basically it was only forwarding inbound packets to the DMZ

[Howard]

How come I can find NOTHING on the net relating to it then?