Remote Desktop cannot verify?!?!

Question

So I'm very ticked right now... I bought my father an iMac for Christmas, and he lives across the country in Florida (I'm in California). When I went home for the holidays, I set up everything on his iMac and turned on "remote management" on his machine. I have Apple Remote Desktop 3.5.1 on my 15" Macbook Pro (running 10.7.3) I tested out ARD on my machine, and controlled his machine with ease. I was able to log in to his machine when I was in the house with no problem... I now returned back to California with a nightmare of this. I can't connect to his machine at all now... I have the IP address for his machine, username and password and I keep getting this ridiculous "verification failed" error. I try "adding anyway" and it just says the machine is offline. What is the deal here!??!?!
The whole point of me doing this is to help my father out while I'm away, and I can't figure out why the **** this won't connect.... I verified that he has remote management turned on (allow access for all users, all local users can observe, control) Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

In my opinion, ARD is really meant to be an enterprise product for buisnesses.  In fact the product used to cost $400.00.  I really wish Apple would spell that out clearer now that they dropped the price.
Not knowing what your Dad's network set up is like, I will make the assumption there is a DSL or Cable Modem and a consumer flavor firewall involved like one of the Linksys products.
I think the key point you need to look at, is using Port Forwarding on the remote firewall, (if there is one).
It is certainly possible to access a remote computer through the internet using ARD.  ARD really is not geared to this task very well due to the fact, most enviroments are using a version of NAT known as PAT, (Port Address Translation). PAT allows many internal hosts to share a single external IP address.
When trying to connect to the remote machine using the external address of the firewall, unless Port Forwarding is configured, the firewall doesn't know what to do with the packet and simply drops it. (In effect doing what it's supposed to do).
Using Port forwarding you can "MAP" the external address along with ports 5900 and 3283 to the internal address of that remote computer again using ports 5900 and 3283. This is a fairly simple configuration on most consumer firewalls. (I have done this, so I know it works).
You then enter the external address of the firewall to access your Dad's machine.  Please note, unless your Dad is set up using a static IP address from his ISP this address is subject to change and will.
Antother thing to note, some DSL or Cable modems may NOT be set up in bridging mode or have firewalls built into them.  This may be another thing to address if adding port forwarding doesn't work. I have encoutered that issue in the past. Most modems allow the mode to be changed. If not placed in bridging mode, the network is in essense double NATing the address if using a seperate internal firewall.
As Teen Titan mentioned, logmein might be a simpler approach but this approach has worked for me.
I hope that helps.
Gary