by
klui » Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:11 pm
chris90 wrote:Both my father and I use Sonic, and I'd like to use Windows Remote Desktop to give him help without driving to his place. Does this require a static IP address on his end? Or, is there a way to find the Internet-visible IP address of his router and connect into his machine?
Yes, allowing RDP is relatively easy and requires 3 general steps.
1. on your dad's computer allow RDP for the user you'll be logged in as
2. port forward 3389 to your dad's computer
3. get a free account on dyndns.org and set up DDNS
1 is self-explanatory, if not use Google. 2 is to allow your dad's router to forward port 3389 on his WAN side to 3389 of his computer. Depending on the router, it can work with just the name of the computer or it will force you to associate by IP, which usually means having a static IP associated to the computer. If you don't want to use a static IP, use DHCP reservation based on MAC address. 3 allows you to associate a DNS name that could change often to your dad's connection. You should either set up DDNS in the router, if it has that capability or install a dyndns client which will automatically change the DNS entry if your dad's connection ever changes. If your dad has Fusion, you can ignore step 3 and just allocate a free static IP. Many have found that even Sonic's DHCP behaves much like static ones and don't change often.
If your dad is a person who likes to tinker and is interested in how things work, you may want to use something like VNC. VNC allows you to easily show him how to do things while he watches because if you can't easily do that using RDP. I have basically the same set up for my dad--I can use RDP or VNC. Most of the time, some of his questions are answered best by using VNC so he knows what to do next time. To set up VNC, I would recommend you use a combination of VNC and SSH, and have VNC only allow loopback connections so as to force you to use a good encrypted communication channel. I also use a limited Windows account to login through SSH.
EDIT: clarify 2
You should configure it on your system so you can test what you've done when you go to your dad's place.
