VNC through NAT

[Scott C. Best]

David:
	Hello! Yes, connecting to a VNC server that's behind
a NAT'ing router is very straightforward (well, okay, it's as
straightforward as such things get).

	The first thing you need to do is to connect to the
server using the IP address on the *external* side of the
NAT'ing router. So the server itself might have an IP address
of 192.168.1.7, but "from the outside" it will have a different
IP address, something like "208.216.228.252". So point your
browser at that second address, sometimes called a "real
world routable" IP address.

	The second thing you need to do is to configure the
NAT'ing router to allow this incoming connection. Most NAT'ing
routers come in the form of firewall/routers which actually
do PAT as well as NAT (ie, port-address translation as opposed
to network-address translation). For instance, the popular
LinkSys security appliances do this. You'll need to go into
the configuration page for that router and tell it two things:
first, it needs to allow incoming connections to TCP port
5900; secondly, it needs to "port forward" that incoming
connection to port 5900 on your Win2k VNC server. If you want
to connect to the server using the web-browser Java applet,
you'll need to do the same for tcp-5800 -- not required if
you'll be using a standalone VNC viewer.

	Once you've got that setup, you'll be able to connect
from the outside, thru the router. What some people do, which
is pretty keen, is to port forward 5900 from the outside to
port 5900 on PC0 on the inside, then forward 5901 on the
outside to 5900 on PC1 on the inside...incrementing the outside
port for each PC on the LAN, but not changing the 5900 on the
inside. Then by changing which "display number" your VNC client
is trying to connect to, you'll be able to reach all of your
PC's on your LAN. Cool.

	Hope this helps!

cheers,
Scott


> Is there a way to connect to a workstation in a Windows 2000 network using
> NATing?
>
> David L. Bozarth
> Operations Manager
> Honor Information Systems Inc.
> (843) 971-4170 Office
> (843) 971-0214 Fax