Hi, this is Chris Marciello from VitaminCM.com and today were going to be talking about controlling your home computer from another computer via the internet.
Now the software that you need to use to do this and it’s called VNC or Virtual Network Client software. And you can use this on Windows, Mac, Linux, you name it. So I'm going to show you how to set it up on my computer first which is a Mac. And to do that, you need to set up two pieces. The first thing you need to set up is the server. That will allow the computer to be controlled by another computer. I'm going to go in and set that up. So I'm in System Preferences and I'm going to click this Sharing Folder under Internet and Wireless. And there's a bunch of services here and if you look this one Remote Management. Remote Management is going to let other computers control this computer.
Now you need to do a couple of things. So if I click on that Computer Settings button, you’ll see a few things like VNC Viewers May Control screen with password. And I've set up a password on my computer, you should do that on yours. Click OK. And another thing, if I click on my computer name here and say Options. There's a bunch of different things that I can set up. So I can open applications, things like that. So you want to have most of these checked so that you can actually do things on your computer remotely.
So, that’s set up and running. So that’s the first thing you need to do.
Now, you're going to be controlling your computer from another computer that’s outside of your network. So in order to be able to do this, you need to set up something on your router called Port Forwarding. So I've log in to my router and you can log in to your router usually by going to this IP address 192.168.2.1. And log in and start configuring settings on your router.
I've got a Belkin router which I'm about to replace, but most routers have a fairly similar interface still allow you to set this kind of things up. What you're looking at here is a list of different computers connected to my whole network. So my iPhone is connected. This is my computer that I'm sitting on right now, my Mac. And this is my Windows laptop that’s on it.
I'm actually going to do further on the demo is control this computer from another computer over the internet. So what I need to find out is what is the IP address of the computer that I want to control. And its 192.168.2.4. So this is the internal IP address, this is the IP address inside my home network. So I'm going to go over here to this other tab where I have the firewall settings set up. This is where I'm going to control the reports on my router. Now VNC uses three different ports to communicate, 5500, 5800, and 5900. So I set these three in bound ports up, 55, 58, 59. And what's that’s going to do is when traffic comes in to my network on those ports, it’s going to route it to an internal IP address. So one of these IP addresses that has a computer on it. I want to make sure it routes to my Windows laptop which is at the third number there. So I’ll put 192.168.2.4, if I want to control one of the other computers I would put .2 or 3 there and apply these changes. So now, anything a VNC server tries to connect to my home network, the routers automatically going to know route it over to my Windows laptop and let it control that.
Now there's ways that you can get more advance and I could control all the different computers on. I have to put on a whole bunch of different settings, but I'm just going to keep it simple for now.
So now that I've set up the VNC server on my laptop and on my Windows laptop. I want to connect to it to control it. you need to use a VNC viewer client to do this and the one that I'm using on my computer is called Jolly Fast VNC, there's also Chicken VNC for Mac, there's tons and tons of free VNC viewers for Windows and Linux. So you just download whichever ones seems best for you.
I need to create a new connection that will allow me to connect through the internet to my home network and control my other laptop. So what I’ll do is click on this plus button and adds a new connection and what I click on this I have the Properties. So I’ll name the new connection Windows Laptop, this way I know I'm going to take control of my Windows laptop at home when I'm on the road with my Mac laptop.
Now I need to do a couple of things. I need to configure the port. So I want to use 5900, that’s the one that VNC uses to connect. And I need the network address for the public external IP address of my network. And that’s pretty easy to do, so I'm going to go back to my browser and I'm going to go to this website, its called whatismyip.com. Just hit refresh. And it will show you your public IP address. So I want to highlight that. Copy it. and then go back to my VNC viewer and paste it in. but before I do that, I have to get this laptop off of my home network and I have to go out on to someone else’s network. So imagine I click this computer to work and now it’s on my works network, I wanted to connect to the internet to my home network.
Now the way I'm going to do that is jump off of my wifi network and connect to my neighbor’s wifi network who I ask permission to do. So I’ll just go to my wifi settings and switch off my network on to his. And I'm connected then, so now I’ll hit connect. And it’s going to ask for the password that I set up on my server. Type in that password. Click OK. And that’s it, so it opens up the Windows laptop that I have. So now remember I'm not on my own network anymore, I'm out the internet using my neighbor’s connection. And now that I have that open, if you’ll notice, down here in the system tray. I have the VNC server running. I can open that up and you’ll see all the settings that I have here. So for instance, what I'm allowed to see, what I'm allowed to do, the things I'm allowed to perform on this laptop, et cetera. The password that I set. And I could do pretty much anything that I want on this other computer. So I’ll hit Start Programs. Go into Office. And open up Excel. So once Excel opens, I could just create files. Do every basic function as if I'm sitting in front of this computer typing. Test, and then I'm just going to save it to the desktop. I’ll delete it later. So I’ll save it. I’ll close Excel. Close that and then you’ll be able to see, there's the file I just save to the desktop. And then I could just shut this computer off if I want. Just Start. Shutdown. Hit OK.
So that’s how you can use VNC server and VNC viewer to control your computer from another computer across the network. So you could control your home computer from your work computer or vice versa. If you're over your friend’s house and you needed to get files off your computer, you can just login to the internet and do that.
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