Remote Desktop through Linksys Router

[Sappster]

Hey yall,

I'm in need of some assistance. If this is a similar post to someone else than I'm terribly sorry. I go to college in Nashville and am wanting to set up a Remote Desktop to my family's computer in Michigan. They have the Linksys BEFSR41 router. I have heard that I need to forward the IP address so that it will be harder for people to "crack" into my computer. But now I see that I need to use dynSite too so that I can log on and not have to put in the IP address which changes frequently. So this is my situation. The only other problem I have is that I'm NOT at home, and so I have to walk my parents through setting this up for me. If someone could help me understand how to do all this, or get me a website I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

 

[nightowl]

What you need to do is forward the port that Remote Desktop (Terminal Services) uses to the IP address of the computer that you want to be able to connect to. This computer will need a static IP address given to it. If it does not have one then you might not be able to connect to the computer because the DHCP server in the router may give it a different IP address. After you give the computer a static IP address you will then need to go into the router web based setup and look for the Port Forwarding tab. On that tab you will need to enter the port for Remote Desktop (I think it is 3389) and the IP addres of the computer that you want to control. After that you should be able to connect to the computer by using the WAN IP address when trying to connect to your computer over the Internet.

 

[JackMDS]

This is much more elaborate then what you want, but it will show you the principals about making your computer available through the Internet.

Cable/DSL Server.

 

[Sappster]

I'm going to go to Dnyasite to get a domain name for their computer. And once I do that I can use that name instead of the IP address because it changes so frequently. That by JackMDS seemed a little more complicating than what I'm looking for. If there is anyone else who can help me out I would appreciate it. Thanks.

 

[l33t]

nightowl said everything you need to do.

the "hard part" is teaching your parents what an IP is, how to determine what it is, and remind them that it changes every now and then. Tell them about whatismyip.com and teach them to copy/paste. Unless you really really want to, there's no need to register a domain name for your parents since you'll have to go thru the hassle of setting it up every month or so (which is about how long my road runner ip lasts before it changes). That'll only make things harder imo.

Have you tried Remote Administrator? It will work with any windows OS on a lan or over the internet.

With radmin, this is all you need to do:

Install radmin on both machines (file is like 1 mb or so).
Set a password that connecting machines must enter.
Optional but preferable: Configure your router to give a static LAN IP to your parent's pc.
Configure the router to forward the correct port for radmin to the static IP of your parent's pc.
You're done.
All YOU need to do is, whenever you're parents are online, tell them to go to whatismyip.com and have them instant message it to you or email it to you. Then, simply configure radmin on your pc to connect to their IP, enter the appropriate password, and you have full control of their desktop in seconds.

Alternatively, if all you need to do is simple file transfer, there's an option for just that. No need to load full screens. You just connect to em and trasnfer files from their drives to yours.

Also, you have the option of performing telnet commands in case you need to troubleshoot something or copy/paste in dos or execute a batch file or whatnot.

It sounds like a big hassle, but it really isn't. The entire setup takes about a minute to do.

 

[ivwshane]

Your in luck the easiest thing you can do is point your parents to a whois type place, then all you have to do is download and install remote commander 3.0 on your school machine (it's a trial version).
After you do that you simply type in the IP an administrator level username and pass and connect. After that you will be presented with your parents desktop.



That sounds pretty cool right? Well there is one small catch, the computer you are connecting to needs to be winnt based machine (winnt 4.0, win2k, winXP). Hopefully it is and all your problems will be solved.

Otherwise there are a ton of similar products that would probably work with various OS's but you would need to configure the firewall.