Cannot ping remote PC

I'm trying to set up VNC on a friend's PC so that I can remotely access it
from my computer. Unfortunately, I am unable to connect to her machine. On
both my router and my friend's router, ports 5800 and 5900 and been manually
unblocked (as recommended by the writers of TightVNC). Also, windows
firewall at both ends has been configured to allow VNC access through the
firewall. There are no other firewalls running. My friend's ISP is Virgin
Media (ADSL, not cable). My ISP is freedom2surf (Opal).

I tried to ping my friend's router IP address and this also failed. I'm
puzzled as this is something that I expected would work.

Any ideas anyone?

"Andy Burns" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:HomdnYywt-8JiSHRnZ2dnUVZ8m-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Mr. Benn wrote:
>
>> I'm trying to set up VNC on a friend's PC so that I can remotely access
>> it from my computer. Unfortunately, I am unable to connect to her
>> machine.
>
> Whenever I setup VNC for friends/family I use the listening client method,
> so that
>
> 1) It's obvious to the other person I can't connect at will to their
> computer, they must initiate the connection.
>
> 2) So long as their router/firewall allows outbound traffic, all the
> configuration is done at my end.
>
>> I tried to ping my friend's router IP address and this also failed. I'm
>> puzzled as this is something that I expected would work.
>
> I'm not particularly familiar with Virgin's setup, do they use NAT? If
> so, then the listening client configuration should work for you too.

I'll check again to see whether I set up a listening client on my friend's
PC (I think it was just called VNC Server (application mode, and not service
mode) so that she will have to instigate the connection.

I don't know if Virgin Media use NAT. I'm wondering if they block any
ports.

"Smithy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:_(E-Mail Removed)...
> Mr. Benn wrote:
>> I'm trying to set up VNC on a friend's PC so that I can remotely
>> access it from my computer. Unfortunately, I am unable to connect to
>> her machine. On both my router and my friend's router, ports 5800
>> and 5900 and been manually unblocked (as recommended by the writers
>> of TightVNC). Also, windows firewall at both ends has been
>> configured to allow VNC access through the firewall. There are no
>> other firewalls running. My friend's ISP is Virgin Media (ADSL, not
>> cable). My ISP is freedom2surf (Opal).
>> I tried to ping my friend's router IP address and this also failed. I'm
>> puzzled as this is something that I expected would work.
>>
>> Any ideas anyone?
>
> Forget VNC and use TeamViewer http://www.teamviewer.com/index.aspx
>
> It's free for personal use, works behind NAT, doesn't need any port
> forwarding setting up - it just works and it's brilliant.

Thanks for that suggestion Smithy. I will give TeamViewer a try and see if
I can get that to work.

"Mr. Benn" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:i9h3p6$our$(E-Mail Removed)...
> I'm trying to set up VNC on a friend's PC so that I can remotely access it
> from my computer. Unfortunately, I am unable to connect to her machine.
> On both my router and my friend's router, ports 5800 and 5900 and been
> manually unblocked (as recommended by the writers of TightVNC). Also,
> windows firewall at both ends has been configured to allow VNC access
> through the firewall. There are no other firewalls running. My friend's
> ISP is Virgin Media (ADSL, not cable). My ISP is freedom2surf (Opal).
>
> I tried to ping my friend's router IP address and this also failed. I'm
> puzzled as this is something that I expected would work.
>
> Any ideas anyone?

Lots of things to worry about here:

1) Your friend's router - does it get a static or dynamic IP address from
her ISP? If static you need to know what it is. If dynamic, you need to
find out what it is at the moment you need to make the connection. She can
tell you it by looking at her router's management page; but if she can do
that she probably doesn't need the sort of help for which you propose using
VNC. So you need to configure her router with a Dynamic DNS account so that
it can maintain a URL that points to the external IP address of the router.
Some routers don't have this facility.

2) The router may have a managment setting that controls whether it responds
to pings from the internet. It may also have settings to control who on the
internet may be able to ping it. So from your point of view it might be
very useful to have a static IP address for yourself. If you tell us the
make and model of her router we can perhaps advise.

3) Either your ISP or hers might block ping traffic. Depending on the
router you might be able to test the connection by using some other
protocol - telnet, for example. But you would then need to explicitly
configure the router to receive such traffic. Point 2 above covers this.

4) You need to establish the IP address of her computer on the local
network, and ensure that it remains the same. Either make it static, or
configure the router to reserve a specific IP address for her machine, by
binding it to the machine's MAC address.

5) On her router, you need to arrange a mapping so that port 5900 (which I
think is all that is necessary for VNC) is mapped through to the IP address
of her computer. That way traffic from the internet is allowed through her
router and delivered to her computer. (This is a problem if she has more
than one computer!) There is no need whatever to do anything with your own
router or Windows firewall, because you are initiating all the traffic.

6) VNC will work on any flavour of Windows up to XP Professional. You have
to open the computer's firewall to incoming VNC traffic.

7) VNC can be made to work after a fashion on all flavours of Vista. It
will only operate in "User mode"; so the user must explicitly start the VNC
service every time she logs on. This is OK for your friend (as you've
discussed elsewhere) but impossible for other circumstances where you
require remote access to an unattended machine, or to a machine used by
somebody needing training at a more elementary level.

8) UltraVNC can be made to work on all flavours of Windows 7. The installer
will open the necessary ports in the windows firewall so you don't have to
bother. I think UltraVNC will work on Vista.

If you need this help, are you really the right person to help your friend?

--
Graham J

Meanwhile, at the uk.telecom.broadband Job Justification Hearings, Mr. Benn
chose the tried and tested strategy of:

> Any ideas anyone?

Idea #1 would be, use Logmein or similar instead.

Idea #2, NAT the VNC port to her machine, because unless she's got a public
IP address on her PC or you've got a VPN to her, it's not going to work.

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) ((E-Mail Removed))
18:25:26 up 12 days, 22:57, 5 users, load average: 0.06, 0.07, 0.09
"I am utterly appalled at how I have been treated like a criminal"
-- Andrew Crossley, ACS:Law, 13 August 2010

"alexd" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Meanwhile, at the uk.telecom.broadband Job Justification Hearings, Mr.
> Benn
> chose the tried and tested strategy of:
>
>> Any ideas anyone?
>
> Idea #1 would be, use Logmein or similar instead.
>
> Idea #2, NAT the VNC port to her machine, because unless she's got a
> public
> IP address on her PC or you've got a VPN to her, it's not going to work.
>
> --
> <http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) ((E-Mail Removed))
> 18:25:26 up 12 days, 22:57, 5 users, load average: 0.06, 0.07, 0.09
> "I am utterly appalled at how I have been treated like a criminal"
> -- Andrew Crossley, ACS:Law, 13 August 2010
>

Use the free version of logmein ( www.logmein.com ) instead

Paul

On Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:17:47 +0100, Andy Burns scribe:

> Graham J wrote:
>
>> If you need this help, are you really the right person to help your
>> friend?
>
> That's a bit harsh, we all get "puzzlers" once in a while where we think
> we've set everything when trying to get two remote systems to talk to
> each other, but the systems have different ideas about it ...

Look, it happens to everyone - no matter how 'clever' they seem to think
they are, and I agree - it's only an arsehole that would come out with
this kind of crap.

I've watched Cisco certified network guys struggle to ping hosts because
of Norton Internet Security/Windows application level firewalls. I've
watched MCSE's not be able to figure out that DNS was down. In a world
full of 'professionals' everyone struggles or overlooks something trivial
from time to time. Hopefully we learn from it, and overcome it.

One thing I would say - don't rely on ping. Some idiots in this group
seem to consider it scary and dangerous and moronically shut off IGMP to
stop it from working.

OTTOMY I'd probably ask myself:
"Have they REALLY opened and forwarded ports on their mo-rou-swich-
kludge?" Just what security software is running and is it allowing
inbound / outbound communication? Is the VNC server actually bloody
running?


1. Establish the IP of the remote machine (and that they are not using
TOR or some proxy service...)
2. try a ping (but don't expect it to succeed)
3. try to telnet to the port of the VNC server and see if you get any
response.
4. personally, at this point, I'd probably do a quick port scan.


If it's dead Jim.... this depends on your users skill level....

5. have the remote user attempt to telnet to your client port (notably
watching for any dialogue boxes from application level firewalls like
Norton/Zone Alarm)
6. have the user attempt to telnet locally to the vnc server port and
look for a response.
7. get in your car and do a site visit to resolve this.....

As someone pointed out, having a reverse connection where you have a
listening client is probably the best course of action and is usually
flawless

UVNC 'Single click'....
http://www.uvnc.com/pchelpware/sc/
.... is great for this and reasonably easy.

1: follow this guide
(http://www.uvnc.com/pchelpware/sc/create.html)

Once you've created you single-click.exe have them download and run it.
At your end just make sure you have the client running on your machine in
'listening' mode, and port 5500 open/forwarded. Simples ;-)

"Andy Burns" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:_O-dnYu-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Graham J wrote:
>
>> If you need this help, are you really the right person to help your
>> friend?
>
> That's a bit harsh, we all get "puzzlers" once in a while where we think
> we've set everything when trying to get two remote systems to talk to each
> other, but the systems have different ideas about it ...

Yes, I was a bit taken aback by that comment from Graham. Thank you to the
posters who have provided me with useful suggestions however. I suspect
Virgin Media may be blocking some ports so I'll try using 1194 or 22 as I'd
be surprised if those are blocked. If I still can't get VNC to work, I'll
try using TeamViewer as Smithy suggested.

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:38:08 +0100, Smithy scribe:

> Andy Burns wrote:
>> Rusty Lady wrote:
>>
>>> As someone pointed out, having a reverse connection where you have a
>>> listening client is probably the best course of action and is usually
>>> flawless
>>> At your end just make sure you have the client running on your machine
>>> in 'listening' mode, and port 5500 open/forwarded. Simples ;-)
>>
>> And you haven't made the connection depend on some "free today, gone or
>> expensive tomorrow" service run by a 3rd party.
>
> But I'd rather use TeamViewer _now_ because you can literally have it up
> and running, helping the person who needs help, within about three
> minutes. You can always mess about with VNC when/if TeamViewer 'goes' or
> becomes payable for non-commercial use.

I'd rather consider the security aspects of a 'man in the middle'.
Thanks, but no thanks.

"Peter Andrews" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:lyBvo.25576$(E-Mail Removed)2...
>
> "Mr. Benn" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:i9jnch$amm$(E-Mail Removed)...
>> "Andy Burns" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> news:_O-dnYu-(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> Graham J wrote:
>>>
>>>> If you need this help, are you really the right person to help your
>>>> friend?
>>>
>>> That's a bit harsh, we all get "puzzlers" once in a while where we think
>>> we've set everything when trying to get two remote systems to talk to
>>> each other, but the systems have different ideas about it ...
>>
>> Yes, I was a bit taken aback by that comment from Graham. Thank you to
>> the posters who have provided me with useful suggestions however. I
>> suspect Virgin Media may be blocking some ports so I'll try using 1194 or
>> 22 as I'd be surprised if those are blocked. If I still can't get VNC to
>> work, I'll try using TeamViewer as Smithy suggested.
>>
>
> I use VNC to and from a VirginMedia (Cable) account to various other ISPs
> without problem.
>
> Peter

Thanks Peter, that's worth nothing. Maybe the ports aren't blocked after
all.