Remote desktop iphone app vs BT home hub 2.0

Question

I got an app (RDP lite) which lets me use my pc remotely when I set the ip address to my pc's and use it at home. So it's fine internally but when I want to try it externally I try setting it to my routers ip address, provided by bt home hub manager and under 'home network' then 'ip addresses', and that doesn't work. I know I need to configure my router to allow incoming traffic to my default port for windows (XP), 3389, but I really don't know how. I've tried a few things like letting supported applications 'vnc' to device 'ibm...etc' and removing the firewall temporarily but I'm shooting in the dark here.

Please help, thanks for your time Jaff

Answer 1

I was about to buy that app, but I'm a long time user of LogMeIn Free were from here (Denmark) I help my mum and dad as well plenty of friends with their computer related problems back in my home country (Portugal)

LogMeIn Free was a fantastic as free solution, no hassle with proxies, routers or anything as it works with port 80 (http traffic).

So I bought the LogmeIn Ignition App and continue to use my access to all computers that i used before. It's a bit expensive ($29.99) but I bought it within a promotion discount and works marvelous and super fast!

I can now access any windows or mac computer from my iPhone or iPad with no worries.

It's just an idea.

Answer 2

It's usually called port forwarding but in your case it's most likely to be found under the 'applications' you mentioned in your router. Make sure your PC has a fixed IP address and set up a rule in your router to forward all 'port 3389' traffic (that's the default port for the RDP protocol) to the IP address of your PC. Then try to connect your RDP client on your phone using your public IP address.

Quit often routers allow you to map inbound traffic on a specific port to a local IP address on another port. That's usefull if you want to control multiple PC's behind a router, if it's just one, use the same portnumber, 3389 in your case.

Answer 3

You need to do a few things:

• Set up your PC to have a static IP address on your home network, you can do this two ways. Either tell the router to always assign the same IP address to your PCs MAC address or tell the PC to take the same IP address when it starts up. Best thing to do here is to search for your routers model number and the phrase 'static ip'
• Have the router forward traffic on port 3389 to your PCs port 3389 via the port-forwarding section of your routers configuration panel
• Identify the external IP of your router (go to www.whatismyip.com) or setup a dynamic DNS entry, try www.dyndns.com or www.no-ip.com
• Tell the firewall on your PC to allow incoming traffic on port 3389
• Make sure the PC is listening for your connection on the right port

It sounds like you're almost there, you might just be missing a small part.