Hi guys,

First may I say what an excellent forum this is- I have been lurking for the last couple of weeks since I got my N800 and have learnt so much about the device which I just would not have gleaned anywhere else!

So far, consulting with the various threads here has seen me get my jabber, msn and gtalk accounts talking to each other, all the software I need installed swiftly, and generally resulted in great enjoyment of the N800.

But now I'm stuck- I really want to be able to *see* my PC desktop from my N800 from wherever I happen to be. I really need pretty simple, step-by-step instructions on how to make this work, first from the same local lan (local IP addresses) and then from further afield. I'm running Vista on my PC.

I have installed various VPN/VNC clients (and I still don't know what the difference is!) on my PC and N800, but I just don't have the expertise to follow some of the very involved threads there are here. Can someone set me up with a dummies guide on where to start?

Just to bring you up to speed with where I am at- I've forwarded ports 5900 in my router, installed (and now uninstalled) realVNC on my PC, and the VNC viewer on my N800. I simply can't figure out where any credentials can be entered into the N800 (like account passwords etc), but using no authentication as an experiment I've managed to get VNC viewer on the N800 to apparently connect to my PC on the local network, but no screenview appeared. I then gave up and uninstalled everything!

I have also done lots of searches, but like I say, the threads are somewhat too technical (despite my moniker) for me! Maybe someone could start by telling me what software I need installed on the two devices (PC and N800), what the difference is between VNC and VPN, and how to provide authentication info into the N800?

Your help here would be much appreciated, and I have a funny feeling I'm not the only one after some simple guidance here!

Many thanks

Sounds like you are on the right track and shouldn't be far from connecting successfully. I am not in front of my PC which is running VNC so I can't give you exact instructions right now, but essentially the steps are:

You need to install a VNC server on your PC, like RealVNC
You need to ensure the server is running
You need to enter an access password
You need to set up port forwarding so that your router forwards the correct port to the PC running VNC server

Then you can install VNC on your N800.

When you start VNC on the N800 you need to tell it the connection details, ie, what address you want to connect to. If you are on your local network, give the local IP address, like 192.168.1.3. You might need to add the port number as well I can;t remember. If so, it would be 192.168.1.3:5900 or whatever.

If you are accessing your machine over the Internet, give the IP address of your router. If you have a static IP address, then that's easy. (You can also give the full host name, like fishead.btinternet.com)

If you have a dynamic IP address, then that means that your IP address changes each time your router connects to your ISP. If you have a dynamic IP address then you need to go to somewhere like dyndns.org, which offers a free service and allocates you with a host name like fishead.dyndns.org which automatically updates itself with whatever IP address you are assigned when you connect. Effectively this means you can always enter fishead.dyndns.org into VNC Viewer and it will find your router, and thus your PC.

I guess I can't help further until you tell me at what point you are encountering problems. But I am sure we can get you working - it's not that complicated although it seems so when you start!

As for VPN - that's an encrypted link between two machines. You can run a vnc session over a VPN. But you can also run a VNC session over the Internet without using a VPN.

If you want to find out more about setting up OpenVPN check out my blog (there's a link at the bottom of this posting)

Once you get VNC working to take control of your PC from your N800, you could set up OpenVPN, making a secure link between your N800 and your PC, and then connect the VNC client to the VNC server over this secure link. In theory this should be a secure way to access your PC from the N800.

Many thanks for the comprehensive reply- much appreciated.

So I now have RealVNC installed on my Vista box- and here I think is the 1st problem- Vista. Reading around, it seems like most VNC progs don't like Vista much, so I'll have to work on that as a separate problem.

Anyways, I now have the N800 and the PC at least "seeing" each other, in that the N800 asks for a password when I try to VNC to the PC. But after I enter the password, all I get is "authentication to VNC server failed". If I try to add the IP address of the N800 as a viewer on RealVNC, it gives me a "connection failed" message.

I *think* I'm making progress, thanks for your help!

Update: I think I have now got my N800 to connect to the PC, at least no error messages are appearing, but all I'm seeing on the N800 is a white screen with a black dot which moves under control of the pen. Even though I have selected "disable local events when server in use" in RealVNC, I am still able to control the PC locally. Maybe I am now hitting the Vista issues with VNC? What do you think?

Have you tried UltraVNC from www.uvnc.com ?

That has a beta with VIsta support, and certainly UltraVNC on XP works well with the N800 VNC client....

Sounds like you are getting closer

Why don't you use Remote Desktop Protocol?

PRO:
-much faster
- win 200 (Server) and xp (prof. and server) and up have the server already installed
- more secure
- really integrated in the host OS (windows)
- on win server you can login on the monitor and remote with different sessions (and screens)

CON:
- it' s from microsoft ( ;-))
- the server only runs on windows


I use rdp for all my win-Servers and Clients and VNC for my linux systems to do remote administration (with my N770).


Here is a small howto:

To enable the server to accept logins:
1. start - settings - systems - remote
REMOTEDESKTOP

Select which user could use RDP.

Than you need to tunnel or to map port 3389

On the nokia 770 / 800 install rdesktop (it's a linux / free rdp-Client)

- start a network connection
- Run rdesktop and enter
Your Server name or ip, username, password and hit OK

You should see the screen of your PC (on win prof. the user who is logged in will be logged out).
The onsceen-keyboard from the nokia 770 will not work within rdesktop.

BUT: You could use the onscreen-keyboard from windows by clicking:
Start - Accessory - Input Assistence - Onscreen Keyboard

(something like that: I use a german WinXP installation).

I hope it will help you

mark

Thanks for all your help guys- I have finally got it working, albeit very slowly, using the enterprise edition of VNC server, and lots of playing around! Yay!

I would *love* to use rdesktop, but just could not get it working on my N800- every time I started it, entered some options and clicked on "save", it just exited the program. Hence trying the VNC route.

Now the next challenge is how I copy files from my PC to my N800 remotely- the VNC server says it's supported, but I have absolutely no idea how to make that work.

Again guys, my thanks. This is a brilliant forum with genuinely helpful people for us newbs to get up and running.

Update: rdesktop now works- I needed to forward the port in my router. I am just more and more impressed with this little device!

I've been following this thread with interest. I would also like to connect to a Windows XP machine that is behind a firewall, but I don't want to expose the Windows box in any way to the Internet.

What I would like to do is use ssh with port forwarding to first establish a connection to one of our Linux boxes and then tunnel VNC and/or rdesktop through that connection to my Windows box. Would that work with the ssh on the N800? I've tried a few command line options, but no joy yet.

If anyone has done this please post the ssh connection options for the N800 side to make this work.

Thanks.