Hi
I would appreciate any pointers on where I’m going wrong. I’ve read everything I could find over the last two days, so am seeking a hand up here if possible.
I have 2 sites, work and home I’m trying to connect via vnc. Home has an iMac with Leopard and a powerbook with Tiger. Router is a Netgear DG834 with a dynamic IP address. Is this a problem? I can buy a static address if necessary.
Work has same powerbook with tiger and G5s with Panther. Router is a Netgear RP614v4 with a static IP address. Opened the ports on the router.
Logmein.com works perfectly from work to home and locally on both networks, but doesn’t install on Panther, (and for unspecified reasons am unable at present to upgrade G5s to Tiger or Leopard). So I’m turning to Vine Server and Viewer. With erratic results - mea culpa.
Work connects locally no problem, but I can’t connect to work from home. Nor can I connect locally at home from Tiger to Leopard using Vine nor OSX, despite the Viewer showing the server running locally on the Leopard iMac. Leopard to Tiger works fine.
Remotely to the office from home fails everytime.
Fundamentally there should be NO problem connecting with different versions of Vine running on different versions of the Mac OS. So what you are looking at here is almost certainly a network issue.
A useful debugging technique is to see if you can enter http://IP:PORT/ in a browser. If you get back
RFB 003.XXX
then you are getting to the server. If you don’t you have a network problem.
If you could describe specifically what is failing I might be able to offer additional pointers.
Thanks. That’s a start. When I first tried it, there were problems, ie the spinning wheel and progress bar went on forever. Only from Tiger to Leopard though. Each server found itself, Tiger on http://192.168.0.3:5900 and Leopard on http://192.168.0.4:5900 both gave RFB 003.889.
Only Leopard found the Tiger server, reflecting the problems I was experiencing when trying to connect to the OSX server or the Vine Server from Leopard to Tiger.
Checking all connections, restarting, double checking all local network firewalls same result so far. No connection from Tiger to Leopard on 5900.
Sorry, just to clarify, after restarting, I could then get the RFB 003.889 result when going Tiger to Leopard, which I couldn’t before, but still unable to VNC connect to the Leopard server from OSX’s Go/Connect to Server/vnc://192.168.0.4
Going the other way works immediately.
Not connecting when going Tiger to Leopard, using Apple’s Go/Connect to Server/vnc://192.168.0.4, which works from Leopard to Tiger, but have now tried the Vine Viewer on Tiger and that has started working for the first time.
Thanks.
Haven’t started running the Vine Server yet, so these connections are both using OSX’s built in server (with Vine Viewer on the Tiger as OSX stalls in that direction).
When I restarted and double checked everything, I found logmein running in the background and turned that off, will try again with it on to see if that made a difference.
Is it right that both OSX’s server both use port 5900? Seems like that aren’t “autoassigned” like IP numbers.
When you see “RFB 003.889” I believe that indicates that you are connecting to the ARD server on that machine, not to Vine Server. Vine will identify itself as version “RFB 003.008”. Try running Vine on a different port (like 5901).
Sorry, didn’t see your last post. Yes, you are connecting to the built-in server, which always runs on port 5900. Try running Vine Server on a different port and connecting to that, and see if that helps.
Thanks again. This is really helping me get to grips with the way the two servers are working.
I started the Vine Server on Leopard now, and Tiger can connect to it from Vine Viewer at port: 5901, or to OSX’s Ard server on port: 5900.
when I enter http://192.168.0.4:5901/ or 5900/ in a browser on Tiger, it shows RFB 003.008 for both ARD and Vine.
Going the other way, Leopard to Tiger, shows “003.889” for the ARD server… but “003.008” for the Vine server running on Tiger.
Its more than a little confusing for newbies, but its starting to sink in.
Unfortunately the office/home connection is too far apart to get to now to bug shoot, and what I thought was working on Friday before I left, just doesn’t connect now.
They seem to have some kind of sub-net operating, the public IP is not the same as the static IP their Netgear lists. This is in addition to the local IPs 192.168.x.x. Not sure how to get around that. Nor if my dynamic IP is a problem for connecting routinely (as long as the IP no stays the same).
Any tips as to how I should approach that?
Still getting nowhere with connecting remotely.
The office IP is 88.xxx.xx.166 (via whatsmyip.com)
There is a sub-net which has a static IP of 10.24.53.2 (taken from the router configuration)
and there is local IP for the server mac I’m trying to contact of 192.168.x.x
The Vine server, and Apple’s ARDserver are both running at the office, but I can’t see via the Vine Viewer. In fact I don’t know how to address a remote Mac.
Server IP: 88.xxx.xx.166
Port: 5900
But how does that route to the sub-net of 10.24.53.2? Do you enter this?
Server IP: 88.xxx.xx.166:10.24.53.2
I’ve tried “Reverse connection” via the Vine Server, but that doesn’t seem to do anything. Again what IP do I enter, what syntax for sub-net addresses? Where does the “Connection invitation sent to Connect Host” appear? Doesn’t seem to appear at the office address.
I’ve read through the manuals, but can’t find a simple explanation of how to remotely connect that I can understand. Is it possible to explain this? Not being in both places at once makes testing this incredibly difficult. Help!
Getting network configuration right can be difficult. A couple of things to keep in mind that may help:
A machine can have more than one IP address. It may have one address on an internal network, and a different one that is visible from the rest of the world.
Some network gateways block some traffic. For instance, it’s possible that your office network, or your ISP, blocks traffic on port 5900.
Network equipment like routers connect networks together and can sometimes redirect selected messages. This can be used to work around restrictions. For example, if you aren’t able to connect to a machine through port 5900, you may be able to connect to it on a different port (like port 80, which is rarely blocked) and configure the router to redirect that traffic to port 5900 internally.
One site that is very helpful in configuring this is http://portforward.com/. It displays your external IP address, and contains detailed configuration information for a large number of different routers and firewalls.
Unfortunately, networks can be complex, but hopefully this information will help you figure out what you need to do to make your setup work. Good luck!
Thanks. But it seems I can’t direct Vine Viewer to my office IP because although it has a “public” external address of 88.xxx.xx.xxx, it also is then split into a number of “zones” numbered 10.x.x.x, onto which our local network of Macs and printers sit and from which our router serves via DHCP numbers like 192.168.1.5.
I can get at our router on our local network and open all ports as I have on my home router, but can’t get at the 10.x.x.x router, as that belongs to the ISP guys in charge of the building.
Does that make sense that there could be networks within networks? And if so, how could I write the command that would forward Port 80 to our local internal network? Logmein does it happily, but won’t install on the older Macs running 10.3.9.
Ok I found a similar configuration in the Port Forwarding site. “port forwarding through two routers”
So I have to get the IT guys (who are mostly non-accessible) with access to the first router, who assign us a static IP 10.24.53.2 to forward Ports 5900-2, 5800-2 and 5500-2 to a computer on our internal network. But as we only have that one static IP, it’d have to be to that IP number, which is shown in our router. We don’t actually have any computers on the 10.x.x…x network. All ours are on the second router network, 192.168.x.x.
Exactly. If you’ve got networks within networks you have to make sure that the traffic can get through each step of the way. You shouldn’t need port 5500 open for traffic coming IN to the server, though. That port is used for reverse connections, which are going in the other direction, for the server to connect to the client.
Great. But just help me understand one thing about getting through double router networks.
When I get them to do the port forwarding on the first router (which assigns 10.x.x.x numbers), which I can’t get at from our second network, do I ask them to port forward to OUR router gateway address 10.24.53.1 or our Static address assigned by them. 10.24.53.2?
It’d have to be one of those two, right? They can’t assign directly through to our second router’s 192.168.x.x numbers, can they? To where our computers are actually connected?
They port forward first to 10.24.53.1 or 2, then I port forward (on our router) to one of our 192.168.x.x nos?
That sounds right. The first router needs to get the message to the second router. So that would mean forwarding to whatever address the second router has on the 10.24.53.xx subnet. Then the second router is connected to both the 10.24… and 192.168… subnets, so it needs to forward to the correct destination machine on the 192.168… network.