Remote Desktop Connection Help?

Greetings,

Hoping someone can shead some light on the remote desktop connection app from microsoft that connects your Mac to a Windows machine. I have the program installed on my mac, and I've been able to connect to my PC machine when I've logged into my wireless network. When I'm not at home though and log into a different wireless system, the IP address that works at home doesn't do anything for me. I'm sure that this is basic stuff for you folks, but networking/wireless systems is not my specialty!

My home PC is connected to a lynxsys router, and dsl modem. I think that there is a setting that I need to change with regards to my router.. hmmm.. Anyway, any help would be appreciated! (also, when responding consider that getting my wireless system up and running alone was a big feat for me!!) Thanks in advance,

John.

Hi John,

You need two things.
A) Your router's IP address. From the outside, this is the IP address you will connect to.
B) Config your router. You need to tell your router to route traffic on port 3389 to your PC. That is the port RDC listens to. It's fairly simple to do. Just read your manual. I can't tell you how, because the instructions vary. But usually, the setting is under "Port Forwarding" or "Applications and Games".

You can see from the attached how I route everything to one mac at:

Now... there is another solution. It's called Hamachi. It's a zero-config VPN. In basic terms, it creates a virtual private network from across the internet.
So no matter where you roam, as long as you have hamachi on, it is as if every one of your machines is on the same LAN.

Start here:
http://www.hamachi.cc/
And here:
http://hamachix.spaceants.net/

I do use it and it's great. It gives every machine it's own IP address on the private network. So even if you had 5 PCs at home, you can connect to all of them at once from anywhere on the net (which is impossible to do through a router). Sweet =)