hey there...it was quite amusing to see you set the subject to my name...flattering if i may say so. =) But there are a lot of people that know much more than I. However, I feel obligated to respond. Here's my experience with the whole RDS thing in a nutshell...a big nutshell…perhaps a cocoa nut.
You have your computer at work you want to access from a remote location. This computer has a local IP address of 192.168.*.*. (the *’s represent any number up to 255. More than likely it’s something like 192.168.0.2)
You need to give your XP machine a static IP address. First off, let me explain the difference between a static and a dynamic IP address. Static addresses are set manually…they are non-changing IP addresses. Dynamic addresses allow the router to automatically pick an available IP address.
For most purposes, dynamic IP addresses is the easiest way to do things. Since no two machines on the network can have the same IP address, its trouble-free to let the router automatically choose an available IP for each machine. The problem with this is that each time a computer is reset or turned off…it looses the IP address that the router has assigned it. Then when you reboot the PC, it requires a new IP. The router will randomly choose the next available…and this new one is not necessarily the same address as before.
When you use static addresses though, the computer will always have the 1 IP address that you manually set for it. You need to do this because when you set up the router to forward ports, you will have to tell the router what IP address to forward these ports to. And if these numbers are constantly changing, the system renders useless.
Here’s how to set a static IP address for your XP machine:
Go into your control panel and open your network connections. Find the connection that you’re using to access the router (it’s usually ‘Local Area Connection’). Click on this with the right mouse button and open properties. Click on “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)” and click properties. Check “Use the following IP address”. Type ‘192.168.0.100’ for the IP address. (you can use anything between 2 and 255 for the ‘100’ number. 100 is just easy to remember and probably not used on your network anywhere else. It seems you only have 1 computer attached to your router anyway…is this true? If not, you need to do this process to all of your other machines too, but with a different ending number instead of 100 since it’s been used) For the subnet mask type “255.255.255.0” (this is the always the same on all of your computers). Hit OK and you’re done setting up the machine with a static IP address.
Now you need to let the router know not to assign IP addresses! In the router properties, there should be a setting for DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). Find this and disable it. Now, the router will use whatever IP addresses are set to the machines. If you ever add a new machine though, don’t forget that you need to give it a static IP address!
Now your computer should be able to use the internet through the router just like it did before you gave it an IP address. Verify that works now.
Go back into your router settings and you need to forward TCP port 3389 (not UDP port like smah said) to the machine you want to use remote desktop sharing on…which we just set the to be ‘192.168.0.100’. So put port 3389 with 192.168.0.1. This is the only port you need to forward to use RDS!
Your setup is now complete.
To access your computer:
If you’re using windows xp to Access the machine at work…skip this part. If youre using any other Operating system, you need to install the Remote Desktop Sharing software from the Win XP cd. Follow these steps:
Once the software is on your machine and you have the connection box up like in step 4 of the link above, your setup is complete! To connect to your machine now, all you need to do is connect to the internet and in the RDS connection box, type in the WAN (wide area network) IP address of your router at work. This number is assigned by your ISP and can be found in your router settings like smah said. What happens is your computer comes to your router looking for a connection on port 3389, which is the default port for Remote Desktop Sharing. And since you have port 3389 forwarded to the IP address of your XP machine, 192.168.0.100, your router will allow a connection through it. Your outside machine and XP machine now can communicate like you want. You don’t need to worry about VPN for this. There is only one IP address assigned to your router at any one time. It may change periodically, but you need to use the one that is currently assigned to your router at the time you want to connect to it.
Concerns: The WAN IP address that your ISP gives you should not change hardly at all! Mine has changed once in the last year and a half. But you know this though and are looking into it. You should be able to memorize it and use it without having to worry about it changing. Also you need the new router that allows port forwarding…but you also know this.
I hope you not only can set this up to work right, but also that you learned a thing or two doing this. I tried to explain everything rather than just tell you want to do. I hope you don’t feel unworthy to use Tek-Tips and hope you use it very often, as it is a great resource of information! The more you try, the more you learn! Let us know of any problems you run into and we’ll do our best to help you out and help you learn! Much luck…
-Adam
