Remote Desktop
 

Hey everyone... I searched but i cant seam to find an answer to my question. I got remote desktop to work when my mogul is connected to the router that the computer is connected on... is it possible to use EVDO away from my home network? Preferably a free way! and if so can someone point me in the direction of a tutorial? Thank you!

Re: Remote Desktop
 

I don't understand the question here but I use remote desktop with very good results all the time without wifi (I don't even have wifi in my house). Forward the port in your router and just point remote desktop to your external IP address. There isn't a charge (assuming you have free data).

Re: Remote Desktop
 

and how do I find my external ip address! that's not the simple 192.168.1.100 I assume.

So it works when using wifi for me but I just can't do it without being on the same network as the computer. I want to be able to control thecomputer from like school or work.

Re: Remote Desktop
 

Your router should tell you, otherwise there are many sites out there that will tell you. A quick google gave this one: http://www.ipaddressworld.com/

Note that you will probably have to forward the port in your router (unless it supports UPNP and you have windows set to forward it automatically in your router (not sure if it will do this for remote desktop)...

If this is too confusing for you just try it with that address (and it may very well work without doing anything), if it doesn't work you will have to forward the port in your router. If it works now, ignore the next section:

This is accomplished usually by visiting http://192.168.1.1 on your home computer, logging into the router (often the password is simply admin with no username, otherwise you may need to look it up in your router's manual which is usually available online from your router manufacturer's website).

Go into the port forwarding area and forward port 3389 to your computer's internal IP (192.168.1.100). Note that this address can change if you have multiple computers connecting to your home network and you are using dhcp. You can set it to not change somewhere in your router config, or if you only have one computer on there it might not ever change and you might not have to worry about it.

Re: Remote Desktop
 

this was a tremendous help for me..
i can now remote, from my work location, to my home PC through my device.
when i jumped for joy and ran over to show my developer buddies 3 cubes down, they laughed at how seemingly unsecured this was.
however, i had to 'allow' incoming connections from my device IP address, before my Kaspersky firewall would accept that connection.

with that said, IS this really all that secure, and could anyone with a packet sniffer actually connect to my IP address and log in ?

I also DID port forward 3389 in my router admin.. should i un-do that ? or is that the action that actually allows this connection..
i'm just amazed at how simple it is now to be able to remote to my home machine like this ! but am slightly concerned at the security of it now...
any comments ?

Re: Remote Desktop
 

Anytime you forward a port to a computer there is risk, you are opening a service up to the entire Internet. Was playing with SSH a while back, and in a matter of a few weeks I was getting hammered with brute force attacks daily.

Re: Remote Desktop
 

If i removed the port forwarding, would i still be able to remote connect to that desktop ?
or is the forwarding of port 3389 the magic key to all of this..

Re: Remote Desktop
 

You have to forward this port for it to work. One way to make it more secure is to pick a random port and forward it for 3389 on your internal machine. You can, say, forward port 33421 to port 3389 on your internal machine. Then you enter your_ip:33421 into the remote desktop app. This would block 99% of people trying to get into your machine or looking for one to get into even if your remote desktop was not secure.

Remote desktop is secure though anyways, as long as you don't have any easy to guess passwords on accounts you allow remote connections on. Remote desktop is also encrypted so you can't just sniff it and connect. Many businesses use it.

If a security flaw is ever found in remote desktop, as long as you have windows update on, your computer will automatically patch it anyways, but changing the port will keep anyone looking for that kind of thing out.

Edit: use a port from about 10000 to 65535 (the maximum port number)....

Re: Remote Desktop
 

Oh, and also, if you remove the port forwarding and it still works, that means windows is automatically forwarding the port through UPNP (a service which allows windows to request it's own port forwardings). If you can connect with it off, that means windows is effectively forwarding it's own port through your router and doing the same thing. See my above post for a more secure way to do this.

edit: In all actuality though it really doesn't matter anyways unless someone can guess your password or a security flaw was found in remote desktop. I keep mine on a different port anyways though because I'm paranoid.

Re: Remote Desktop
 

you could also try installing logmein, which is a program that runs on your computer, and allows you to connect to it and do remote desktop from just about any internet enabled device. www.logmein.com