Well, I figured out how to solve my problem. My thanks to people who directed me to prior postings. The solution is relatively complicated and you have to get all the steps just right and all the naming conventions just right or it doesn't work. I thought I'd share what worked for me in the hopes that it helps other newbies who had difficulty finding easy to understand answers in one place.
The problem: In order to access my home computer from a remote location, I need to know its IP address. How do I determine the ever-changing, "dynamic" IP when I'm not sitting at the computer? I can't be in two places at once! The solution, as many pointed out, was to find a company that would give me a permanent name website name for my computer and update the changing IP automatically. The company I used was www.myserver.org I know there are others, but this is the one I happened to choose, and it worked well for me. I went to their website, registered, and created a web name for my computer. You choose a name, followed by "myserver.org". For purposes of this letter, let's say the name is http://surname.myserver.org Note that you don't put in the "www" like for most websites. And you have to put in the "http://";. Great! Now I had a website name I could remember and that wouldn't change. But it didn't know my ever changing, real IP address. So I went to the myserver.org download page and downloaded "myserver.org.2.0.zip". This application automatically checks my real IP address and updates my website with the current IP address. I unzipped and installed this piece of software, called Dynamic DNS App and have it running whenever I want to be able to reach my computer from a remote location. So far, so good. I now had a (free!) permanent website address to put in my browser to access my computer from a remote location, and the software on my computer to keep the website address up to date with my dynamic IP address. Except that all I kept getting was the web page built into my browser! I couldn't get past the router to my real computer! How to get past the router? The best help I found on this problem was at the following site. http://faq.gotomyvnc.com/fom-serve/cache/63.html This was a clear document and helped me a lot. The problem as it turned out, was to get my router to recognize the "ports" that Real VNC needed to access. I have a Linksys wireless router, model BEFW11S4. Here are the steps I used. In my browser, I typed in the router administration address: http://192.168.1.1 I clicked on the "Applications and Gaming" tab. There is table entitled "Port Range". In the first empty box under "Start" I entered 5800. In the first empty box under "End" I entered 5900. In the empty box for "IP address", which is the local machine address -- NOT the Internet address -- I entered 100. (Your machine might be 101 or 102.) Then I clicked the "Enable" box and saved the changes. So, I fired up the myserver.org dynamic dns software running on my computer. And I started RealVNC server running. Now I called a trusted friend and asked him to type the following in his browser address bar: http://surname.myserver.org:5800 Voila! It worked. He immediately took control of my browser and directed me to a porno site filled with popups! Hey, that's what friends are for. My thanks to RealVNC for making such useful and tight software available free. Might I respectfully suggest that you folks consider re-writing your documentation and include a fairly straightforward step-by-step for newbies? I make no criticism particularly when so many people freely gave me their time and expertise. But the documentation as written assumes a level of knowledge that is quite high and that perhaps much time could be saved both by new users of RealVNC and by the helpers in the postings area if the documentation that was included with the software was more basic. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Thanks, everyone, for your help on the automatic start up question. I now have VNC server running on my computer and I can remote-access it from other computers on my home network. However, I can't find my computer via the Internet. The "Getting Started" document says: "Each computer has a unique IP address and may also have a name in the DNS. You will need to know the IP address or name of the server when you connect a viewer to it. Sometimes the IP address is fixed, and sometimes it is issued to you dynamically by your ISP. If it is allocated dynamically, you might consider using a third party DNS management service. Try typing "dynamic dns management service" into a google." This is an area in which I am quite ignorant, but I did read all of the VNC documentation, searched past mail postings, and did some reading on the Web before writing. And, as the documentation suggested, I googled the term "dynamic dns management service" and read several of the pages and ads that came up. As near as I can tell, the problem is that I don't really know the correct IP address to put in the Web browser's address bar as my ISP gives my computer a dynamic IP address. However, I really don't know how to proceed. Do I need to buy a domain name and then register with a DNS service provider in order to have a fixed server name? If I do so, then what do I put in the command line? _______________________________________________ VNC-List mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To remove yourself from the list visit: http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list
