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remote desktop

Hey guys

i have a router with 4 computer behind it. using the dhcp on the router. I enabled remote desktop on all 4 xp machines and i want to be able to access any one of the computers whenever i want now a couple issues are these. I opened the port 3389 on the router and made it point to one of the machines on the network. however that i only one machine i cannot get to the other 3 machines. when i run the windows client from the start menu then run and then i type in MSTSC and then there is no option to specifiy a port if there was a way , i could have opened ports on the router pointing to different computers. please tell me any ideas.

thanks

theitguy

Member_2_2473503

Unfortunatly you can only have 1 outside IP forward to 1 internal IP on any given port, if you had more external IP's (very expencive) you could have different IPs forward to different internal IPs.

You could remote desktop into one system and then remote destop from that one to another one... I think this will work

You could create a VPN link into your network (some routers have the ability to create VPN tunnels) what kind of router do you use?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Rob Williams

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Member_2_2473503

I wasen't sure if RobWill's second idea would work, so I diden't mention it. But now that he posted it, I agree with that one (it may be your best option)

Just remember by forwarding your remote desktop connection thrugh your router you are opening yourself up to attack. I would strongley recomend a VPN into your network then remote desktop. This way everything between you and the remote system is encrypted.

RobArdill

As the others have said. Setup the rotuer to port forward different ports.

The forwarded port doesn't have to match the actaul destination port. It does for some protocols, but not RDP.

Computer 1 WAINIP:3389 -> 192.168.0.2:3389
Computer 2 WAINIP:3390 -> 192.168.0.3:3389
Computer 3 WAINIP:3391 -> 192.168.0.4:3389
Computer 4 WAINIP:3392 -> 192.168.0.5:3389

In the lastest remote desktop client, specify WANIP the destination port above on the line.

So if your WAN IP is 123.123.123.123 then to connect to computer 3 enter 123.123.123.123:3391

<WANIP>:<port>

Regards
Rob

crossfireit

Hi,

What has been already said is 100% correct, the easiest way to do it is change the ports.

What are you trying to achieve with this?

The reason i ask is because of licensing issues with XP.

From a techs point of view if you are doing this for remote support it may not be pratical, i have set up remote support for clients and within windows xp you are only allowed one use logged on at a time. so if you ahve users using the computers when you try to RDC you will not get in. If however it is for 4 users to work remotly it will be fine.

Tech Point of View:

I generally set up one computer running RDC so that i can connect securly via this. then on the other PC's i run Real VNC: http://www.realvnc.com .
This allows me to log in and see the desktop of the computers to help the current users that are logged in. The other advantage of this is that it only opens up one port on your system rather than 4.

The other thing you might want to be carefull of is even though DHCP in a small network will almost always give out the same IP, if something was to go wrong and you had cleints assigned to different IP Address;s your port forwarding will not work. To aviod this i would recommend that you statically assign the ip addresses of the computers. This will save you getting a phone call in 3 months saying "HELP its not working, it was working, what happened, blah blah blah."

Hope this helps

Rob Williams

theitguy, have you been able to configure your multiple RDP connections?
--Rob

Rob Williams

Thanks theitguy,
--Rob