Setup network to allow remote desktop

[homer786]

Hi,
I am a complete newbie to networking, so please bear with me.
I am trying to setup my home network to accept remote desktop connection requests from outside the network. I used to access remote desktop easily when I had no network and had only one PC. All I had to do was simply use the public IP address that my ISP assigns and bingo. However now I've got 3 PC's on my home network and am not sure how to access remote desktop from outside.
My home network:
Belkin router/network Hub with public IP
1st PC internal IP: 128.195.x.xx
2nd PC internal IP: 128.195.x.xy

My question is how do I setup the router and the PCs in order for me to access one of these PC's from outside the network? If use the public adress that my ISP assigns to me, obviously it wont work because it gets assigned to the router (not to the individual PC).

Is there a website or a tutorial I could use to get this to work. I appreciate any help/comments/advice. Thank You.

 

[smah]

You need to set up port forwarding for your router. The port needed for RD is 3389. Apparently Belkin calls this feature virtual servers- see

http://web.belkin.com/support/kb/kb.asp?a=1448&langid=1

In short, you need to forward port 3389 to the ip address of the internal machine that you want to access. Then, when you use RD outside your network to connect to your router's public IP address, the router will forward (or route) the connection to the specified interal computer.

You should find specifics about how to set this up in your belkin manual or on their website. The link I posted above, I found by searching their site for port forward

 

[fs483]

Also the router probably only allows you to forward one public IP to one internal IP. If you need to have access to more than one machine, you can use RDP from within the internal lan to access the other pcs.

anthony

 

[homer786]

Thanx a lot you guys. This info was real helpful.