Re: Connecting though internet when client Macs are on office network

Question

I have a small company with two iMacs at work which are on a network with several other PC's. I have a home office with a Power Mac G5 (not intel based) and a satellite office 1500 miles away in PHX with a MacBook (brand new). I am trying to be able to access and control my main office computers using Apple Remote Desktop.
When I am at the main office with the MacBook and connected to the internet in the office I can use the ARD to control the two iMacs. But when I go home or down to Phoenix I cannot.
I have searched the forums high and low, but I must be computer illiterate. I cannot understand how to make it work. I assume there are some firewalls in the main office? Please help!!!

Answer 1

To be able to connect to a workstation from outside it's network, the ports that ARD uses must be open on both ends of the connection. ARD uses ports 3293 and 5900 so those must be open.
If your workstations get their addresses from an NAT device rather than being "real", the ports also need to be forwarded in the router to the workstation's internal IP address. ARD uses port 3283 for the reporting and updating function, so if your Macs are getting their IP addresses through NAT, since you can only forward a port to a single workstation, you can only get reports, push package/files to etc. for a single workstation.
ARD uses the VNC protocol for observation and control, though, and there are a range of IP addresses for that protocol, starting with 5900. ARD uses 5900 by default, so that port would be forwarded to the first workstation. You would, I believe, need to install VNC servers on the systems (since the ARD client cannot listen on any port other than 5900 while VNC servers can be set for other ports such as 5901, 5902, etc. You would then forward 5901 to the second workstation (and on to 5902, 5903, etc.). You can then use the following information:
Remote Desktop 2: How to specify a port number for a VNC client
to connect.
The only other options are: 1) to run the ARD administrator on a workstation on the network, and then take control of that system from outside, either via VNC or another copy of ARD, or 2) set up a virtual private network (VPN) so that when you connect from outside, your admin system is officially part of the local network.
Hope this helps.