Need some help running VNC with a LAN

Hello,
New to this form and to networking. Any help would be appreciate from anyone who has luck running VNC.
I installed VNC at work and at home hoping to remote access my work computer at home in the evening. The trouble is that I cannot access my work computer. (I can access my home computer from work though.) The trouble I am thinking is that at work we have a LAN. It is a simple one going through a 4 port Netgear router via DSL.

I am sure that there is a simple solution but, simple and computers are not my thing.

THANKS!

 

Yes it does. That was the number I inserted at home to connect to the work computer, or at least tried.
Thanks for the help.

 

Is that static address visible from the internet. If it starts "192.168" or "10." it will not be visible from the internet.

Most DSL network solutions use Network Address Translation (NAT) on the router to spoof the external IP and thereby allow more internal computers to use the internet than would otherwise be possible. If your router is set up this way - and I'd be surprised if it wasn't - It doesn't matter that your works IP address is static as it still won't be visible from the internet.

By the way, I trust you have considered the serious security issues in opening up VNC on an unsecured PC and therefore have:

1. A personal firewall in place on you home PC
2. Limited the IP addresses of systems able to access the VNC
3. Used a secure password (e.g. not a real name or word - include numbers at least)
4. Used one of the more secure version of the software such as TightVNC.

Personally, I'd not allow VNC connection directly from the internet. It is fairly easy to set up a VPN and use the VPN connection to connect from VNC client to server. Using VPN will also overcome your IP addressing/NAT problem - especially if you can utilise a VPN feature on your router.

 

I have thought of the above security items. A VPN sounds like a much better method. The reason I was considering VNC was cost. We are a very small business and have to keep costs down - thus working at home as to hiring more people.
If I am going to spend money, would upgrading to XP Pro, which I have been considering for our network of 4 computers, and using their remote access solve my router problem?
Thank for the patience with a newbie.

(I appreciate the help that this board offers. I am so busy running our business that I don't have to time to research all the stuff for our computer network that I need to, and I can't afford to hire a firm to do so.
Welcome to running a small business in America!)

 

I like VNC. There are better options (My favourite being NetOp which is excellent and well worth purchasing for mission critical applications), but VNC is good enough for many remote access problems. Personally I prefer it to some of the commercial applications - especially PCAnywhere which I have a particular loathing for after having it take out a server on me.

My suggestion was not to use VPN instead of VNC, but rather to use the two together - VPN to give you the secure connection, and VNC the remote access through the VPN tunnel.

The VPN system built into Windows 2000 is good enough for simple small scale applications like the one you want. It uses PPTP which isn't the most secure VPN protocol to use, but is good enough I think and certianly much better than no VPN.

However, if you're currently using Win 9x/ME then you'll need an alternative VPN solution (router to router is probably the simplest) or upgrade to XP.