Private & public IP

[treysha]

Hi there,

I am running a LAN at the office. Each station has its own private IP address, given by my DHCP server (eg, 10.xx.x.xxx).
I am also running RealVNC to log on to a particular PC in the office in case they need some kind of troubleshooting (you know, just so I do not have to walk all the way to the client's PC).

Now, I am also running RealVNC at my home computer. My question is, can I use RealVNC from home to log on to a PC in my office LAN?
I once tried connecting to my friend's home PC using RealVNVC and it worked, but to try it on my office's PCs I obviously need to know their public IP, right? This is where I get stuck.
I have their private IPs, but how to I find out what their public IPs are? or do they have any public IPs at all?

Please advise.

[pave_spectre]

The public IP address would be located at the Internet connection point, and how you would find out wold depepnd on what type of connection you have and what type of device is connected at that point.

One way to be able to access internal machines from outside would be the configuration of Port forwarding at the internet connection point. As far as I'm aware you would only be able to forward the outside connections on the relevant ports to a single machine. It would also potentially open the network to greater security risks than the next option.

The other option that may be available to you would be a Virtual Private Network (VPN). With a VPN you would be connecting from outside to the office network as if you were actually a part of that network. I am not really familiar with VPN so hopefiully someone with more relevant experience will be along.

[juniper]

As stated above using a client to site VPN solution would be the most recommended as you will not have an open port on the firewall nor will your loggin be in clear text over the internet. It will basicly put you on the internal network and allow you to connect via VNC as if you where in your works network. To connect without a VPN you would have to NAT or port forward the VNC ports to a PC if you wanted to connected to multiple PCs inside you would need to change the port VNC is listening on for each computer you want to connect to then port forward each port and open the firewall this is a huge security risk!!!! not recommended at all. To find out what your company is using as its NAT/PAT ip address for http traffic just goto myipaddress.com it will tell you what you are PATd to. However this does not meen there are not other IP addresses that are being NATd so talk with you network admin or whoever does your firewall or router config. What type of equipment are you using for router and/or firewall at work?