Before you read this: The portfowrarding part of the guide is made for VNC. If you want it for something else, find your router on this page, then find the app you are using in the page it takes you to. If you don’t understand port forwarding, I suggest that you read about it first. If you don’t understand what you are doing, it can be dangerous. I’m not responsible for anything that happens to you.
I don’t mean to discourage you about any of this stuff, but if you open up a tunna ports, then h4ckr5 wi11 sw4r^^ yur 5y5+em and you will luzeatunnadatta. I think I’m actually gonna do another howto on securing your connection.
VNC stands for Virtual-Network-Connection. It allows you to see your home computers screen and connect to your computer (your home computer) from any laptop in the world with the right software.
Writing a complete instructable in this would be practically impossibly and huge, so mostly I’m just gonna give you a few links. There are entire websites dedicated solely to vnc, so that is all I can offer for now. Also, this only applies to those who don’t have ‘dialup’ connections that disable you from being on a homephone while browsing.
Before you can move on, however, you have to understand all of this stuff you found. It is very dangerous to finish this guide if you don’t understand it all. (Don’t worry 
its not TOO hard.) This is by far the longest howto I have written so far, so I divide it into sections.
This should work for whatever kind of vnc client you use, but is written for Ultravnc and provides the links for it. This is not to say that you should not experiment with anything else, because the port forwarding part of the guide works anywhere from Palmvnc to TightVnc. ((c8
Your Network
All of the computers you have in your house that connect to the Internet are a village. This village is your network. All of the people inside you village are computers. (ok, maybe you don’t own THAT many computers. Just bear with me)
Your village is cut off from the outside world with a wall. This wall is your modem. There is one gatekeeper to represent every wall in the kingdom. The gatekeeper is irrelevant for the moment. He is just there to help your understanding.
All of the villages in the kingdom make up the internet.Internet. You are probably thinking ‘Ummm…. I can surf the web, so I’m not cut off from all the other ‘villages’. We will get to that.
IP Addresses
Now the king of the Internet sent out a rule that nobody could have the same name. The names of all of the people of the land are known as IP addresses in the real world. There were sooo many gatekeepers that their name changed every few weeks, maybe even days. But the only people who got the message were the gatekeepers, who guard the walls, because there was no way anyone inside the villages could get the news, so they didn’t know about (much less follow) the law. What we call the gatekeepers name in the real world is the EXTERNAL IP address. There were usually so few people living in villages, that they all got there own name and kept it. The names of the people inside the village is called the INTERNAL IP address.
The Gatekeeper
Back to the gatekeepers; to keep their name the same, they had to pay tunza munnie to the mailmen. If you pay them money, they make your External IP address STATIC (static just means ‘doesn’t move or change). The mailmen are the people who give you your Internet They are known as ISPs or Internet service providers. They run around and take mail (web pages and data) from one computer to the other. Sometimes the mail is so big that they have to deliver it in parts called packets. They get through the gatekeepers by telling them the specific name of the person inside the village to give the mail to. The gatekeepers immediately go and deliver the mail to the person inside the village. Now the person receiving male might want to send something back. So he runs it over to the gatekeeper which gives it to the mailman to deliver along with directions. The process in which you get through the gatekeeper is called port forwarding.
The story of Bill and Morg
Bill (computer) of billville (his network) starts playing a game of chess with Morg of Morgburg. The game of chess is an Internet program. Anything that bill or Morg do is a program. This one happens to involve other computers in other villages, so you have to play through the mailman. But if everyone just started sending fake moves to bill and Morg, it would be very hard to win with all of the cheating done by other players in other villages that have heard of the game. That is why, before the gatekeeper lets anything through, he gives them a test of which they must answer all the questions correctly set up by bill. It is usually:
1. What is the secret number that the other person is using. <The secret number, in real life, is called a port. Every program that uses Internet gets to it by a port, like your web browser or an MMORPG computer game. A program can use whatever number of ports it wants, but the big thing is that a port can only be used by one program at a time. >
2. Who are you sending it to? (Bill – Morg or Morg – bill. )
3. What’s the password? (Bill and Morg can chose not to set a password, which is preeety dangerous.)
If any of these questions were answered incorrect, the mailman would not be allowed to pass.
Ports and Firewalls
The gatekeeper has a big book of secret numbers. Entries can be added and removed (by you) whenever you want. Most people just don’t know how. Something you may have heard of is a firewall. That big book of secret numbers is not your firewall. Your firewall is a second book that the gatekeeper has, which he compares it to for double security. The firewall also closes all of the unused ports so that nobody can use them. Some programs that you install (like web browsers) add entries automatically for you so you don’t have to jazz around with it.
Adding and removing entries in the secret number book is what this is allll about. If you are here for VNC, then yes, this IS something that you have to do to set it up.
Ok, that’s all you have to understand to set up port forwarding and vnc.
Another thing is that all of my links open up in new windows, so you might have to turn off you popup blocker.
Ok, the first thing to do is find out your connection, as I stated earlier, you can’t use this instructable with a dialup connection. (Whenever you get online, do you hear a little ‘tune’ thing?). You should have a wire with a weird little cubeish plastic end going into the wall, leading to a little box. This little box should connect to another little box, or just another computer. If you have one that goes from the wall directly to a computer, . If not, then you have to do something called double port tunneling. Ihaven’t looked into that yet, so I am afraid you are on you own on that one ); sorry, I’m gonna try and figure it out once I get a chance. Here’s a link. Nevertheless, my guide MIGHT work, I just dunno.
- *whew* First you have to get Ultr@vnc and install it.
- Next, you have to set up an internal static Ip address. Luckily for us the INTERNAL version of static Ip addresses are free. You can find out how to do quite easily here. A directlink to the windows xp instruction page is here. The page explains everything you are doing, so its not like going down a black slide. This isn’t AbSoLuTeLy necessary, especially if you don’t have lots of computers in your network.My network has a windowsbox and a linuxbox along with the occasional wireless laptop that comes along. Don’t worry about putting your info into the little boxes, is nothing to worry about since nobody is recording it.
- Get a free noip account.
- Add a host. Make it a DNS host (a) and enter in whatever hostname you would like.
- Download the Dynamic update client. Set it up and log in with your username. Check the little box with the hostname you entered in the little box that comes up.
- Now every time you EXTERNAL ip address is changed, it will be uploaded onto the ‘hosts’ page on noip. You can change the settings for how often it checks and whether or not it runs on startup.
- Find your modem on this page. If your modem isn’t there, google it. I found a guide for my netopia, and used the one on portforward.com for my zoom X6. If you still can’t find it, it’s bound to be added soon. Send them a request or use their modemrequest program.
- Before you start following the instructions, turn on the ultravnc HOST so that there is a little eye icon on the system tray. Go to the setup page and set the ‘Main’ port to some random number like 3182 or whatever and set it so that it accepts socket connections. Set the password to something with numbers in it. Please, make it safe.
- Follow through the guide you found. For other vnc progs, find out how to edit the ports that it uses. Usually they are 5800-5900, so that is where hackers go immediately to get at your computer. Don’t do any of those. It’s dangerous.
- You can find out if you forwarded the ports correctly @ canyouseeme.org
- Now on your laptop that you will be connecting through it, get Ultravnc. Or whatever vnc client you wanna use.
- Run the viewer, connect to the interntet outside of your home wireless connection, and enter your external Ip address and the ‘MAIN’ port in a box like this: yourexternalipaddress::MAINportthatyouforwardedandenteredintoultravnc
- If your external Ip address should change, log into noip.com to get it. The port will always stay the same. Also, this is one of the programs that automatically sets itself up with firewall, so you shouldn’t have to fool around with that unless you have something other than windows firewall. You know more about your firewall than I do.
If some of this doesn’t work, or is unclear to you, please comment and tell me how I can make it better.
)
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