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Connecting to Remote Desktop

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by jeffedit

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I want to start using RD on my xp pro machines at home and after looking at the guides on the internet I just want to clarify a few things that I couldn't find answers to:
I have a home network behind a DSL/NAT router.
I assume that I give the xp pro machine a static IP address ie 192.168.0.4 and open port forwarding on port 3389 for tcp/udp.
Then when I want to connect from the internet, I type in the static IP of my router in the RD dialog box? What if I have more than one xp pro that I want to connect to at home? Do I have to enter the name of the machine somewhere?
I don't want to use VPN as I saw mentioned on MS web site, just want to go thru the internet normally. Thanks-Jeff Kesler

2 replies

by brian

You have to set port forwarding in the router. In addition it is nice (but not needed)if the router supports reserved addressing with DHCP. Then you can reserve 192.168.0.4 for this computer but still use dhcp. So the router needs to forward RDP traffic port-3389 to this ip. You then can type in your externalip to access this computer. Yo find the external ip you can go to whatismyip.com if unsure. Unless you have a fixed IP it will change from time to time. You will use the external IP to login using the RDP client. I suggest you have a real good password. You can connect to another machine by using a different port. It will also have to be changed on the other client machine. You will need to search the MS knowledgebase for the details- there is an easy to find article that explains how to use an alternative RDP port. You can generally test these through your own internet connection. I generally test first using the local address, on a local machine, and then try the external address from that same machine, and finally test from external connection.

An easier way to get to PC #2 is to just use the RDP client on PC 1 to goto it once connected from the outside. You can chain connections without much degradation.

by choppit

Because RDP works on port 3389 by default and most home routers only support a single WAN IP it is only possible to connect to one PC via RD.

By using a VPN you would remove this restriction by tunneling to the LAN. XP Pro can act as a PPTP VPN server http://www.onecomputerguy.com/networking/xp_vpn_server.htm

All you need to do then is forward TCP Port 1723 to your XP server, and enable PPTP pass through.

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