Have you ever been in a situation when you needed to access your data from your personal computer but you couldn't do that because there was nobody at your place to send you the files? Well, this situation can be easily overcome using a remote connection. You just sit in front of a computer that has Internet connection and using it, you can control, manage and use your PC back home. You just need to connect to your PC thought Internet and take control.

How does it work?

A remote connection means that one computer will connect to another (through Internet or LAN) and will have access to its resources in accordance with the permission and rights provided by the remote computer. This connection has two actors: a server (the server will be installed on the target machine and will make the computer available for external access) and a viewer (using the viewer, the user connects to the server machine and takes control).

What do we need?

There are many types of remote connections. We shall try to make a remote connection using the method mentioned above (installing a server on the targeted machine). So we need software that provides a server and a viewer as well. There are many software applications available that can do the job; some are free, some are shareware and you have to purchase them to have full access to all the features. To keep things uncomplicated, I shall describe the whole process using a free and comfortable application that you can download from Softpedia, TightVNC. This application is GPL software, similar to the more famous application, RealVnc.

Installation

First, you can find and download the application from here. After you successfully downloaded it, run the installer. You will be asked whether you want to install both viewer and server. Install both of them, because there are settings to be setup.

Next, you will be asked if you want to register the server as a system service (the server will be run automatically by Windows when it starts and will stop when you disable the service) and start it after installation finishes. After all the files are copied by the install program you will notice a new icon in your system tray. It is the server that will run on your machine. Moreover, going to start->programs->tightvnc you will find the viewer too.


Server settings

To properly setup the server right click on the server icon placed in the system tray and select Properties. The settings window will appear. To be sure that the server will allow other computers to connect to it, the option "Accept socket connections" must be checked. Below it, you have to provide a password which will restrict unauthorized access to your computer.

By accessing a remote computer (like this one) you will be able to control it through mouse and keyboard. Under the server settings you have two powerful options: "Disable remote mouse and keyboard" - this means that you can connect to the computer from outside, but you can only view what's going on without having the possibility to use the mouse or keyboard; "Disable local keyboard and pointer" - this option gives more power to the user that connects to the computer. While connected, users present in front of the local computer (the server) won't be able to use the keyboard and mouse.

In case you connect to the remote computer using a low bandwidth connection (dial-up for example) selecting "Remove desktop wallpaper on client connection" will be the right and clever choice. For more settings, access the "Advanced" tab. Here you can setup the connection priority (you can allow shared connection, one connection or refuse simultaneous connections), disable empty passwords (to avoid running server without password) or Allow loop back connections (test sever by connecting from the same machine - good for testing).


Viewer settings

As I mentioned before, you can access the viewer from the start menu -> programs -> tight vnc. The viewer lets you connect to a remote computer that runs on the server. You just need to know the IP of the target machine. So to connect to your PC that is back home you need the Viewer to be run from the computer you work on. It has options tool. In the settings windows you can setup the encoding (tight, hextile, CoRRE, RAW, Zlibhex, and RRE - the default settings work ok, so you don't need to complicate things unless you want to experiment), you can choose the picture quality (the desktop image that represents a number of continuous jpeg images - according to your connection you can setup the compression level) or you can show/hide the mouse cursor while working somewhere else.


Establishing the connection

After you setup the server, you can try to connect to it. So, install the viewer on a PC that has internet connection. Open the viewer and in the "VNC Server" field type the server IP. When you click OK, the viewer will try to connect to the server. Immediately a small window will appear asking for the authentication password. The password is the one you setup when you have configured the server. Without it, you cannot connect to the server. After typing the password, click OK. A window will appear. It will be the remote computer desktop. Now you can work as if you were in front of your computer back home. You have mouse and keyboard access. (unless you haven't restricted them from the server configuration).

Known issues and difficulties

Because of the high number of Internet hacks, computers are protected in many ways: firewalls, antiviruses or ISP restrictions regarding Ports. So, when you setup and configure the server you have to:

- configure the firewall to allow the server to run; you should also open the default port 5900 from the firewall (or other port than the specified one)
- configure the antivirus software to exclude the server and viewer from the dangerous objects list (many antivirus software will detect this application as harmful). If the installation doesn't work, the antivirus may be the problem. Disable it, install the program and then configure it to exclude it.

The sever should be installed on a machine that has Internet connection and uses a personal IP. If you do not have your own IP, ask the ISP to provide one.

Below, I added a few screenshots with settings for Windows Firewall and Kaspersky Antivirus, but the settings depend on your firewall and antivirus software.



This connection is very useful. You have home PC access from any place with a computer connected to Internet or you can install it on computers that belong to your friends, business partners, clients or even office computers to easy configure or repair them when errors occurs without being necessary for you to go there.

If you are an advanced user, you can take advantage of the Wake on LAN function implemented in many modern computers and easily combine it with tightVNC for best results.