Remote desktop won't connect

[kiat]

Hello,
I have a home network and am trying to connect to a pc at work which is also on a network. Both computers are running windows XP prof. I have followed the instructions for remote desktop conncection at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...moteintro.mspx (Not a great article, I believe, since it doesn't even mention the router issue...)
I have a static IP on the PC at work and have configured both routers for remote desktop.
It just don't work.
K

[Adrynalyne]

what about firewalls? Did you open port 3389 on both ends?

Are you sure you did the port forwarding corectly on the work machine?

[kiat]

Hi,
Yes I did open port 3389 on both machines. I'm not sure what I could have done wrong on the work machine... what details should I check?
k

[Adrynalyne]

Make certain that 3389 is pointing to the correct machine in the router--just opening it isnt sufficient. Thats usually the cause, firewalls aside.

[kiat]

now you've lost me. What do you mean be pointing to the correct machine. Pls excuse my ignorance...
K

[Adrynalyne]

Well, you have machines behind a router. Traffic gets distributed to the correct machine when requested by a machine behind the router.

For example. If a machine requests a website by browsing to it--the data packets will come back to that machine.

HOWEVER

Incoming traffic from the outside must have a direct path. So, if you try to connect to port 3389 (Remote Desktop/Terminal Services), it floats around in limbo, not knowing what machine to go to because the machine that you are trying to connect to did not request it.

So, you have to use something called Port Forwarding. What this does is open up port 3389, and direct it to a specific place. So, when you try to connect to your work machine--your request hits the router, the router sees it and thinks "ah, this goes over to machine x". This prevents the request floating around in router limbo.

That is extremely over simplified, but does that answer your question?

[Adrynalyne]

Port forwarding is pretty standard--select the port 3389 (UDP and TCP), and direct it to the IP address of the work machine to be connected to.

[kiat]

The IP address you are referring to here is not the static IP that was assigned by my ISP?
K

[kiat]

Thank you so much for your help. That worked!

[kiat]

One more question...I this setup sufficiently secure?? Is there anything else that I should do to improve security?
K

[Adrynalyne]

Just close it down when not in use. Its relatively secure, but the port is open for others too--if they know how to find it. It will only be a problem if they can get through the password protection on the work machine.

As long as you practice safe computing-- good antivirus, strong passwords, you should be fine. Of course, there are no absolutes on the internet.