Logmein works on Firefox
- Thread starter Macguyver
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meandu229
Zubeman
Could be useful for connecting outside of network thanks, whats the problems with reminina I use RDP and VNC alot on it and its amazing,I've been having trouble getting Remmina to work with my Pandora so on a whim I tried Logmein on Firefox and sure enough, it worked! Very cool. Obviously a slow connection etc but it's certainly usable to remotely operate my windows 7 machine.
Macguyver
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Well my problem is that I've never used VNC before so I may not have configured it correctly on my windows laptop. I understand port forwarding etc but I could never get Remmina to connect via the Pandora no matter what I tried. To be clear, I was hoping that Remmina would be usable outside of my local network to remotely connect to my PC.
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Blue Protoman
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Strange. I never had to port forward. Using Tiger VNC was extremely easy for me, and I can't tell different wireless protocols from a hole in the wall.
meandu229
Zubeman
Only need to port forward if outside of your network, id be worried if you could connect from outside to your pc without forwarding. unless perhaps you have no router and just a modem to your pc,
Maybe your vnc server needs to allow non local ip addresses to connect?
Blue Protoman
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Yeah, I only managed to do it from within my house. Never mind, then!
Just to break down the problem, the first thing to do is to get VNC to connect from within your local network so that you know it's working. On a Windows machine, VNC has to be running as a service awaiting connections, and you need to set up a password to let you connect. Remember too that your desktop on your PC will probably be set at a higher resolution than your Pandora is capable of, so you will have to scroll around to access the whole thing.
Once you know that your VNC server on the Windows machine is working, then you can worry about the port forwarding part of the equation. I believe the default VNC port is 5900 (although that may vary depending on which VNC software you are running; I don't know). It is also possible to set it to run on a different port if you so choose. Once you have port forwarding set up for whichever port VNC is running on, then you need to remember to use the outside IP address of your router for the address to connect to rather than the IP address of your actual computer. This address may change at any time if your ISP doesn't guarantee a static IP address for you, so that is another wrench in the works. (Generally, it won't change a lot, but it can change any time your current DHCP lease expires or any time your ISP does maintenance.)
Once you know that your VNC server on the Windows machine is working, then you can worry about the port forwarding part of the equation. I believe the default VNC port is 5900 (although that may vary depending on which VNC software you are running; I don't know). It is also possible to set it to run on a different port if you so choose. Once you have port forwarding set up for whichever port VNC is running on, then you need to remember to use the outside IP address of your router for the address to connect to rather than the IP address of your actual computer. This address may change at any time if your ISP doesn't guarantee a static IP address for you, so that is another wrench in the works. (Generally, it won't change a lot, but it can change any time your current DHCP lease expires or any time your ISP does maintenance.)
Macguyver
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I really appreciate your suggestions CFWhitman, and I think I'm close to getting this going. I'll give some details on what was causing me to have issues in case someone else is having the same problem. My installation of VNC on my Win7 laptop was done correctly, and I was finally able to connect within my own home network with no problem from the Pandora once I realized that I was using the wrong IP address. So my assumption was that my computer's IP address was what you get when you go to one of those "what is my IP" websites. This did not work of course. By holding my mouse over the tightVNC icon I saw a different IP address (my internal address, right?), and this one did work. Very speedy connection via the Pandora! Looks beautiful, and much faster than through Logmein, but being able to connect via a home network is not nearly as powerful as logging in from another location or even another city. So that was my next challenge...
... And I'm still having issues with trying to connect from outside the network. I'm well versed in port forwarding via my router page so I'm pretty sure I've done that correctly, although port 5900 is being forwarded to the local IP of 192.168.1.107, not sure if that address has any bearing on the setup here because I'm not using that number, being a local address. (My tightVNC software is set up to port 5900 for the main server port and 5800 for the web access port, whatever that means). So THIS instance (outside the network) is where I'm guessing I should be using my "what is my IP" IP address in Remmina, but I can't get it to connect via this method. In the Remmina connection setup for VNC protocol (which worked for the in-network connection just fine) I've set the server to my web IP address in the format xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:5900 No dice. The message "connecting to laptop" comes up but never actually connects.
Perhaps I need to do something else with my router? Any further suggestions? The local network connection worked like a charm. (although I don't understand why it never asked for my VNC password. All it seemed to need was my windows password and it connected instantly)
(Once I do get it set up I also worry about my IP address changing because I'm pretty sure my service provider changes it once in a while but one problem at a time)
Thanks for any further input.
Jey123456
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the port forwarding need to forward to the ip you use to connect locally. then if you connect from outside to your external ip (the whatismyip ip), your router will forward it to your internal ip.
for the ip changing part, you can configure whats reffered to as a ddns. There is a ton of provider for that, dyndns is one of those with a free version. once you have the ddns set, you need to install a client on your pc which check your ip, and automaticly update your ddns if it changed.
for the ip changing part, you can configure whats reffered to as a ddns. There is a ton of provider for that, dyndns is one of those with a free version. once you have the ddns set, you need to install a client on your pc which check your ip, and automaticly update your ddns if it changed.
meandu229
Zubeman
If 192.168.1.107 is the local ip address of your computer(the one you used for local vnc) then thats all you need to do, router might need a reboot depending on model, make sure you have tcp and udp enabled in the port forwarder,
+1 for what jay said with setting up a ddns they are useful
^ What meandu229 said. ^
Whatever address you used for connecting to your computer via your local network is the one that port 5900 should be forwarded to. Was it 192.168.1.107? (Although if you are using your router's DHCP feature, then this could also change. You should probably give your Windows computer a static IP address if you want to do this regularly.)
An alternative way of seeing your router's external IP address is to look at its configuration; you should find some kind of status page that will tell you what IP address was assigned by your ISP. The internal IP address of your router is probably 192.168.1.1 (although it could be anything on the 192.168.1.x subnet). You want to use its other address not starting with 192.168.
Also, I'm not that familiar with Remmina, but on conventional VNC clients any number following a colon in the IP address is the display number, not the port. In other words, if you try to connect with 192.168.1.107:5900 (just an example, since I don't know your actual external IP address, and you shouldn't post it), then you are trying to connect with display number 5900 on the VNC server (which almost certainly doesn't exist). Windows VNC servers generally serve only one display, numbered 0, which is the default display number that clients try to connect to. In actuality, the number you use does denote a port number, but the actual port number is whatever number you give plus 5900. In other words, if you specify 0, then it is port 5900, if you specify 1, then it will be port 5901, etc. So if you specify 5900, then it may be 11800 (I have never seen a port higher than 3 actually in use, so I'm not sure if numbers that high actually work or not).
Whatever address you used for connecting to your computer via your local network is the one that port 5900 should be forwarded to. Was it 192.168.1.107? (Although if you are using your router's DHCP feature, then this could also change. You should probably give your Windows computer a static IP address if you want to do this regularly.)
An alternative way of seeing your router's external IP address is to look at its configuration; you should find some kind of status page that will tell you what IP address was assigned by your ISP. The internal IP address of your router is probably 192.168.1.1 (although it could be anything on the 192.168.1.x subnet). You want to use its other address not starting with 192.168.
Also, I'm not that familiar with Remmina, but on conventional VNC clients any number following a colon in the IP address is the display number, not the port. In other words, if you try to connect with 192.168.1.107:5900 (just an example, since I don't know your actual external IP address, and you shouldn't post it), then you are trying to connect with display number 5900 on the VNC server (which almost certainly doesn't exist). Windows VNC servers generally serve only one display, numbered 0, which is the default display number that clients try to connect to. In actuality, the number you use does denote a port number, but the actual port number is whatever number you give plus 5900. In other words, if you specify 0, then it is port 5900, if you specify 1, then it will be port 5901, etc. So if you specify 5900, then it may be 11800 (I have never seen a port higher than 3 actually in use, so I'm not sure if numbers that high actually work or not).
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Macguyver
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Success! Thanks CFWhitman, now I can use Remmina to connect to my windows PC from my Pandora no matter what network I'm logged onto. Awesome!
The trick was to ensure that my port forwarding was using the internal IP address that tightVNC was using. Once I had that changed it was easy. Then I went into Remmina and setup using my "what is my IP" external IP address using the following protocol:
206.***.***.***:5900
without the :5900 at the end I couldn't get it to work.
- MacGuyver
The trick was to ensure that my port forwarding was using the internal IP address that tightVNC was using. Once I had that changed it was easy. Then I went into Remmina and setup using my "what is my IP" external IP address using the following protocol:
206.***.***.***:5900
without the :5900 at the end I couldn't get it to work.
- MacGuyver
Yes, I'm not surprised. As I said, I'm not that familiar with Remmina. It must use the actual port instead of just the number that you need to add to 5900. This is probably because it handles multiple protocols (not just VNC). If you were to use Tight VNC viewer or Tiger VNC viewer, I think you would have to leave the port number off or use :0.
