Has anyone tried GoToMyPC? (or other remote control software)

[cjolley]

We will be going to China in a few weeks and I thought that GoToMyPC might be a good option.
That way we could connect to my PC at home to get & send email and retrieve any documents I might need.
Our home network is behind a linksys firewall and I dont think I would have to open any ports.

An alternative might be vpn + remote desktop.
I use Remote desktop all the time to get into my work PC from home through a vpn connection and directly to administer our file server, and, in fact, to run our PCs from other parts of the house using our laptop.
But, I have no idea how to set up the vpn server we would need to get into our firewall from the outside.

How about PCAnywhere?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Chuck

PS They all run XP.

[schmosef]

I use VPN + RD all the time for work.

You probably don't need to setup an actual VPN for your needs.

Depending on your linksys model, you can usually set port redirection manually. You'll need to direct port 3389 (I think that's the port RD uses but someone here will probably be able to correct me) to the internal IP address of your PC.

The only other piece of the puzzle is to find out what IP address your ISP is providing to your linksys router.

If your IP is static, you're all set. Just feed that IP address to remote desktop and it will connect.

If it is dynamic, you'll need to get that info somehow. We use DNS2Go quite successfully. It installs on your Win XP machine as a little system tray applet. It sends a "heartbeat" to DNS2Go who is then able to translate the packet of info and derive the origin IP, namely the IP assigned by your ISP.

DNS2Go can be configured to redirect any domain name that you setup (eg., cjolly.com) to your linksys router. So if you fire up the remote desktop client from a PC not in your home and give it your configured domain name as the address to connect to, it will find your router, which will then forward the traffic to your home PC.

Hope that makes sense.

[Jammrock]

Dameware rules!

[VJ]

Euhm, how about VNC for remote control software ? It runs cross platform, is free and does the job...
(also check out TightVNC and other extensions)

Jörg

[cjolley]

Thanks guys.
I haven't decided what to do yet, but you give me some ideas.
chuck