This one's for the Networking Gurus

[tcyree2202]

I need some help troubleshooting a remote desktop connection. I'll try to remember what I've done so far.

I just recently moved to Kentucky from N. Carolina. Before I left, I wanted to set up a remote connection to a friend's Win7 computer. I use OpenSUSE 11.4 on my laptop. I installed cygwin on the windows machine, opened up ports 22 and 3389 in the windows firewall, 22 for the ssh connection, and activated remote desktop connections in the properties menu (don't remember exactly where that was). I tested it on the local network at my friend's house using rdesktop on my SUSE machine, and it worked flawlessly. With all the chaos that comes about with moving, I didn't think to try it outside the local network. Now that I'm in KY, I can't get the connection with rdesktop, ssh, or telnet. The only thing I thought might be the issue was port forwarding on the linksys router in N. Carolina. In other words, maybe I needed to open ports 22 and 3389 with the router's firewall? So, if anyone has any insight or suggestions, let me know. I've always received great help here when it comes to my OG Droid, so I thought I would throw this out there. Also, in KY, I'm behind an AT&T DSL Modem / Wireless Router. I went to the web interface for it, but couldn't find any helpful info on opening ports on my end, if that in fact could also be a problem. All I was able to do was allow my laptop access to certain services, i.e. ssh, telnet, etc...

Disclaimer: I have VERY minimal knowledge about this stuff, so be gentle . I have a general idea about networking related topics, and when I want to embark on a project such as this one, I usually Google stuff until I can't get anymore helpful results. Most of the info that I used to set all this up can be found here:

How to use rdesktop (Windows remote desktop connection) - Ubuntu Forums

This guide was a great help, but now I'm stuck.

[Snow02]

Your friend needs to forward those ports in the router.

But just go ahead and have them setup logmein or teamviewer. That will bypass the port forwarding requirement if they don't know how to do that.

[tcyree2202]

Your friend needs to forward those ports in the router.

But just go ahead and have them setup logmein or teamviewer. That will bypass the port forwarding requirement if they don't know how to do that.

Haha. This is what I was afraid of. I'm going back to visit in a couple weeks, so I'll probably just do it then. If for some reason that doesn't work, is there anything else you can think of that could be an issue? I know I'm not giving you a lot to go on, but I do appreciate the help.

[tcyree2202]

Uhhm, so TeamViewer is pretty slick. I think I'm going to go that route and have them set it up tomorrow. Thanks again for your help!

[Snow02]

No problem. And as routers are configurable in the browser, you can always set up a teamviewer session and then enable the port forwarding yourself, if you just prefer rdp to another solution.

[tcyree2202]

No problem. And as routers are configurable in the browser, you can always set up a teamviewer session and then enable the port forwarding yourself, if you just prefer rdp to another solution.

Good point.