How can I connect to my home computer from work?

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(There are techniques where you can specify that Remote Desktop listen on ports other than 3389. Then by using a different such port for each computer, and forwarding each through the router to the appropriate computer you can connect directly to each. That's beyond the scope of this article, and more complex than most folks will want to deal with.)

Leo I have this problem, can you help me so that I can have two remote desktop connections on two seperate computers through a router with a static ip.

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If you have a dynamic IP address, you can still get to your network, you simply need to know what the current IP address is. There are several approaches, however none of them are really elegant. For example, you can call home and ask someone to visit a site such as Plot IP, which will display your IP, and then having them read it to you over the phone. If you have access to a web server's access logs, you can have your computer at home visit a specific web page periodically and retrieve the IP address from the logs.
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Great work, Mr.Leo Notenboom. The article is exactly what I have been searching for in recent days. I have the same problem, only a bit difference that I would like to connect to my work computer from home but not the vice versa. And I actually did it, I went through all these: port forwarding on the company's router (ADSL modem), port mapping (to my work computer) on the computer that runs as the firewall of the company network, and remote desktop connection. It works! But still the IP problem is bugging, since the modem-router is assigned a dynamic IP by the ISP. It means the IP which I will connect to is changing, though not very frequently, but that fact will make it not always possible to get connected.

So I read your writing: "ask someone to visit a site such as Plot IP, which will display your IP, and then having them read it to you over the phone". I laughed. That's funny. Ok, so my questions are:

1. Is there a more elegant way to get the IP in question?

2. http://www.plotip.com/ is not accurate! It only gives the IP of the my ISP's proxy server. Of course, one cannot connect to that IP. In order to get connected, I have to use the WAN IP address read in the modem, or go to the following web site: www.whatismyip.com to read the real IP:

Your IP Is 222.252.33.28
Proxy Detected Is 203.160.1.41.

I suppose your site also log my IP address and will only see the 2nd one.

I've tried everything and I still cannot connect to my home PC with a "client could not connect to the remote computer" error. We use Remote Desktop connections at work, and I've even used it on my home PC to connect to my friends computer through the internet.

I've even gone so far as to set my private IP to the DMZ on the router with my software firewall disabled, the PC should have a direct connection to the web with no interference! I've forwarded port 3389 on the router, enabled remote access, set up a password for my account, tried the WANIP:3389 in the connection field, and no matter what I do, nothing works. Any ideas? My internet connection works great, but the Remote Connection is a no-go!

Hi Dave W, you've really gone too far with those steps you did. In my case, I can connect to my work computer from home even when my home PC is firewalled, no port forwarding, no DMZ. Just don't block outgoing traffic and you will be able to connect to a remote computer that is able to accept incoming traffic on port 3389. It works just like that.

Ok, I solved the problem by using dynamic dns provided by dyndns.org. Completely satisfied!

Ok, I was misinformed, XP Home does NOT support remote connections as a remote computer. Apparentpy only XP Pro supports an incoming connection without the installation of 3rd party software.. That sucks.

Hi Leo,

This is a good tutorial for Remote Desktop connection.

My problem is this, I have a Pix Firewall installed on my office, and I need some outside users to access the server from internet.

I configure the pix so they can log in, the problem is that only 1 user from the same network can connect at the time, I need several at the same time with the Cisco VPN connection.

Let me explain,

If 2 or 3 users are on the same internet network, let say, 192.168.1.3 - 192.168.1.5 only one of them can connect to the vpn.

How Can I configure the pix to allow multiusers from the same network to access the server?

the pix firewall is Cisco Pix 501 and the client is cisco vpn client.

Thanks for the help.

I use a static domain name from www.dtdns.net. You can register a unique name and then get a small IP Udpater program on your pc that detects IP changes automatically. There are many free ones on that site. This way I can connect to my pc through XP Remote Web Desktop always via the same name eg http://mydomain.dtdns.net/tsweb

To anyone out there who can assist. I'm able to connect remotely from my office to my home using Remote Desktop on port 3389. However; if I were to change my RDP port from 3389 to any other number, it will not connect. I've also edited the registry to reflect the new port for RDP, rebooted and still no luck. When I go to RDP and type in my Internet address followed by (:newportnumber) it also fails. Can anyone please assist me with getting this connect established.
Thank you

Alexei,

If you change the port number to loggin remotely then you need stick the port number at the end of the ip address..lets say that you changed the port muber to 45000 and your ip address is 111.111.111.111 .... then you will need to type in 111.111.111.111:45000 ......

Hope this helps

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