[NCLUG] rdp, vnc through nat

[Goodman,Darrin]

Matt Rosing wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to figure out how to operate my father-in-law's or parent's 
> machine remotely from my machine so I can do some stuff for them. To try 
> this out, so far I put gnome-rdp on my machine and I put a vnc server on 
> a windows machine and now I can control my windows machine, which is on 
> the same local network as my linux machine. What I don't understand is 
> how to run this through the fire walls. The ports are no problem but the 
> NAT is. I can modify my fire wall to send everything related to rdp to 
> my linux machine but I can't get to the firewall at my parent's house. I 
> just can't ask them to touch anything and I can't drive there to set 
> this up. So, I want the server (the windows machine) to initiate things 
> and the client (my linux machine) to respond. Is this doable? Or is 
> there a better way to do this?

Please excuse my ignorance here, but why not just use a remote desktop client?  I use grdesktop to connect to some of our Windows servers at work.  If I am outside of our domain, so long as I am logged into our vpn, I can connect to the servers (and be looking at the Windows desktop on my machine).  Actually, something recently "broke" somewhere (Firewall perhaps? Can't locate any rule in the firewall that is disallowing the connection...) and I can no longer do this from outside of our network, but I'd like to gain a better understanding of how to fix the issue.  Anyway, perhaps the remote desktop method would also work for you.  The Windows machine would just need to be set up to allow remote access.

-Darrin