RDP and VNC

[Stew Schneider]

Chris wrote:
> Thanks! But still slightly over my head ;)
>
> Handling two comps in the same room across a router isnt too terribly 
> hard, but is it possible to check my ubuntu box from 10 miles away at 
> work, on an XP machine?
>

Yes. That's what makes hamachi such an ideal solution for your problem.

Hitting a computer on the far side of a router (your office computer) is 
a trick, because it will have an "unroutable" IP address assigned as a 
member of your office LAN. That IP will be something like 192.168.1.104. 
These addresses don't exist on the 'net, so when you try to connect your 
home machine (with an IP of 192.168.1.4, for instance) to your office 
machine (with an IP of 192.168.1.104 for instance), you can't do it -- 
those addresses are unroutable.

In your LAN, your router is handling the routing (hence the name) of 
traffic into your LAN from out in the 'net, directing the specifically 
work-related traffic from the web site you were viewing back to your 
computer, and the porn your co-worker was downloading to his, a process 
called "Network Address Translation" or NAT. To connect your two 
machines, you have to traverse that -- hence "NAT traversal". Hamachi 
does that for you.

With the Hamachi tunnel established, you run RealVNC or some such server 
on your Ubuntu box, and connect with it with your work machine with a 
vnc client.

Slick as snot on a doorknob, you should pardon the image.

stew