Port Forwarding (tunneling) woes

Hi all

Im trying to set up tunneling on my work LAN. I am designing a program in VB to handle the job takeing databases.

However i need to have remote access for this program as people will be working from home and accessing databases on the works LAN.

Ive never used Port forwarding before, ive looked a few tutorials and i am not sure if i have it set up right for it to work.

I have accessed the main rooter on the works lan.

in the Port forwarding setting i have set up the computer i wisah to have access to from outside and set it a port number

IE 192.168.0.32 Port from: 80 Port to: 80

now when im useing winsock in VB insted of useing a normal internal IP (IE 192.168.0.32) to connect to the PC im useing..

999.999.999.999/80 (999.999.999.999 is actually the external IP of the main router, changed to 999's for obvious security reasons in here)

but this isnt working (my program works fine when run inside the LAN)

im Not 100% understanding how Port forwarding works, so im not sure if im goignabout this correct.

Any help or tutoriasl would be great thanks

I know that 80 and 21 are ports for HTTP and FTP, i used btoh im not sure if the port numbers (as long as they are not in conflict with any other application) matter?

 

There's a bunch we don't know here.

1. Is there a reason you don't want to just use a VPN?

2. What are you using for server OS's - is this a Microsoft domain controller scenario, or what do you have?

3. Don't you just want the workers to log onto their roaming profiles from home, or do you have those?

4. What are you using for client OS's?

5. Is this database app on a separate server from whatever your main server is?

6. Do you have a dmz to cross? If so, what are the firewalls and have you addressed that?

7. Do you have any other firewalls other than the router?

8. Are the application software installs on the clients, and they need to access the database, or?

8. What else can you think of along these lines that might affect this?

 

Ok sorry i wasnt clear.

All PC's are useing Win XP OS

the way the program work s is like this...

I am developing a program in Visual Basic that is a job takeing and dispatch program.

A job is sent to the office wirelessly by a 3rd party (this part is irelevent and working seperatly)

I have 2 programs, one sits on a PC within the company LAN and acts as a server to recive the wireless job details and to dish out alerts to all the client PCs logged in (remotely) The clients PC should get an alert every time a new job comes in.

My program works fine within the company LAN, but not when i try to take the client side of the program outside the LAN to work remotely.

Im useing Winsock to send the data from PC to PC. I dont have any extra firewalls installed on the PC's