Connection Help (Newbie)

Vine
1

I tested Vine and Vine Server on my local machines and it works great. I then shipped one of the tested machines cross country to my mom, who just installed DSL. No router, only the Mac OS X.3.9 internal firewall. I’m on a G5 (OS X.4.8).

The machine is setup according to Vine’s specs: with the Apple Firewall allowing VNC access to ports 5900-5902. But I simply cannot connect to her machine. (Apple Remote Access is turned off.)

If she goes to gotomyvnc.com the address comes up, but if I enter it, I still cannot connect. There is no password set in her Vine server, and I have tried connecting with no password and with her admin password, still to no avail.

I have purchased View Viewer, so I am not in a trial period or anything like that. Again, it works great on MY network, but I cannot seem to connect outside that network.

BTW, I am in LA (5MB Charter cable) and my mom is on Long Island (1.5MB Verizon dsl).

Thanks for any tips that might help. She is 83 and fairly computer illiterate. I am trying to train her from my LA studio.

Mike

2

Hello Mike,

One great resource we have found for folks trying to get their systems working across distant lands/nets is the Port Forward page.

http://portforward.com/

Its possible the ISP/Network your mother uses has a Terms of Service (TOS) which drives the ISP policy to block some ports which are known to consume bandwidth (ports 5900-5901). You may want to try different port numbers (eg. 5902-5962). You’ll have to do the port forwarding for the other numbers you try on her machine also. Yes, it is time consuming, and at times a trial and error issue. If you don’t have success with other port number, you may want to contact her ISP (and yours) to find out what ports you are allowed to use.

Cheers

3

Thank you Todd. I’ll keep at it with your suggestions.

Much appreciated!