Auldfart's How To Guides   How To Remote access Your PC Need access to your PC remotely? Here are the essentials of remote access using different methods               Remote access to your PC or home network is a useful capability to have at your disposal. However, you’ll need to think about what type of remote access you really need.               Here, we take a look at two of the primary remote access technologies available for Windows users, and how you can use these technologies to your advantage, both at and away from home. Remote access options               Although dial-up connections have traditionally been used for remote access in the past, an increasingly popular method for home users with high-speed Internet connections is to configure and use a virtual private network (VPN) instead.          This method enables you to connect to your network remotely, using an encrypted session over the Internet. Once a VPN session is connected, you can access your home network or PC as if you were another client computer on your home network.            Another remote access alternative is the remote desktop or thin client connection. This method uses third-party software or a Web browser to connect to your home PC as if you were sitting in front of the desktop.          While this capability is part of Windows XP Professional, users running other OSes can easily gain the same type of access using free software like VNC. Virtual private networks If you’re running Windows XP or 2000 Professional at home, both systems make it possible to accept a single incoming VPN connection.              While other Windows OSes don’t provide this capability, it can also be obtained through many home hardware routers, which often include a built-in VPN server. The common denominator in both cases is that to make use of a VPN, you need an always-on Internet connection, preferably broadband.           Incoming VPN connections are enabled via the New Connection Wizard in the Network Connections program in Control Panel. From a Windows 2000 system, select the Accept Incoming Connections and follow the instructions for permitting incoming VPN connections.            For XP Professional, choose the Set up an advanced connection option, and then Accept Incoming Connections with the wizard. Once configured, use the New Connection Wizard from your laptop or work system to create a new outgoing VPN connection.           Instead of providing a phone number when configuring the client-side connection, you’ll need to supply the correct IP address or hostname for your home system instead. This can be difficult, because most home Internet connections use DHCP to obtain an address, meaning it can change.  One solution is to use a dynamic DNS solution, which will be explored shortly.             Connecting to your home system from a VPN client is handled in much the same manner as initiating any dial-up connection, except for the dial-up part. Instead, the client will form a secure link into your home PC or network over the Net.            Once connected, the client will obtain a private IP address in the range used on your home network, and can connect to other PCs just like any network client. Remote desktop display                 If you’re looking to interact with your home desktop remotely, Windows XP Professional systems provide a solution known as Remote Desktop. Other Windows OSes don’t provide this capability, but all is not lost.            One exceptional (and free) piece of software that will enable you to remotely connect to and control your desktop is Virtual Network Computing, or VNC.       When VNC is installed on your home systems, you can use either the VNC client software or a Web browser to connect to your desktop remotely.             VNC is available for versions of Windows from 95 forward at www.winvnc.com.           Once installed the VNC viewer software can be used to connect to your desktop remotely. Better still, use the Java capabilities of the software to connect via a Web browser.               Let’s say that you’ve installed VNC on your home PC running Windows XP Home. To connect to this system remotely you would open Internet Explorer and type the IP address of your home system, followed by the port number 5801. Here, the complete address might be something like http://192.168.1.100:5801, but with the public IP address allocated by your ISP provided.                 This method of connecting will require you to supply a password (configured in VNC) to connect, after which you can interact with your desktop through the Web browser.            For greater security, use VNC in conjunction with a VPN connection if your OS supports incoming VPN connections. Using this method, you would first connect to the VPN and then access VNC using the private IP address of the VNC system. This ensures that all communication between your remote client and VNC server is encrypted. Dealing with dynamic IPs           One of the biggest issues associated with gaining access to your home PC or network remotely is that the IP address assigned by your ISP is likely to change regularly. To get around this, consider using one of the many free dynamic DNS services available online, such as the one available at www.dyndns.org.            This service enables you to create a dedicated hostname for your system, such as 2000trainers.dyndns.org, and then use this name rather than your IP address to connect.            Services like dyndns.org make it possible to update your IP address manually via a Web page, but a better solution exists. A variety of small software packages can handle this function automatically, such as the Dynamic DNS client software available from http://sitedevelopers.com.           This tool will not only learn the public IP address assigned to your home IP address or router, but will update the dyndns.org servers automatically when your IP address changes.  This then ensures that you’ll always be able to connect to your home systems using the hostname you’ve chosen. Firewalls            If you’re configuring your system for remote access, then hopefully you have a software or hardware firewall in place. Assuming that you do, you’ll need to configure it to allow VPN or VNC traffic to enter the network.              PPTP traffic, which is most commonly used for VPN connections, will require that you open TCP port 1723, while VNC will require 1 or 2 ports to be opened.        Assuming that you want to use the VNC Web browser capability, open TCP ports 5801 and 5901 on your firewall. If you’ll be using the VNC Viewer software only to connect, then only TCP port 5901 needs to be opened. Create a Web desktop Install and configure VNC to access your home system via a Web browser.            Download and install WinVNC from www.winvnc.com.             If installing on Windows XP or 2000, select the VNC server configuration checkboxes to have the software to function as a service and start automatically. Double-click the VNC icon to access the Current User Properties screen. Ensure that both the Accept Socket Connections and Enable Java Viewer checkboxes are checked, and establish a connection password. From another PC, open IE and type http://192.168.1.100:5801 in the address bar, with the IP address for the VNC server specified. Enter the configured password and click OK. Click Disconnect when you’re finished.