[CentOS] [OT] Remote control of a WinXP machine from a Linux host

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Saturday 10 January 2009 22:48, you wrote:
> I am confused by your description. Do you mean you have Machine A and
> Machine B and you want to be able to access both of them at any time
> over the next three years from Machine C but you could be behind a
> firewall with machine C i.e. I assume you will be traveling and that's
> the reason so you never know what network you will be coming out of?

No, the main problem is that A is behind my ISP's NAT. I want to access it 
from C (yes, I'll be travelling a lot and C might be just about anywhere). 
But the problem is that since A is behind a NAT, the connection must be 
initiated from A's side to C. Also, since C might be behind some other NAT, 
the connection must be initiated from C's side to A. This simply cannot work 
simultaneously, so I tried to make use of my public server B which can be 
used as a "bridge" between A and C. So, A connects to B, C connects to B, and 
then A and C communicate. Roughly speaking...

That was my initial idea, but seems too complicated to work out, so I asked 
for a possible easier alternative. :-)

> Or if want your own set up you could of course for example run some
> sort of remote access service like VNC and just pay for a static IP
> for Machine A from its ISP and set up Port Forwarding for VNC

That would be the most obvious solution, if only the ISP were willing to give 
me a static IP. But they are not. :-(

> (or if 
> you don't want to pay use http://www.no-ip.com/ and use their free dns
> service where you can create a free dns name for use with dynamic
> ip's. You just install their software on Machine A and it will login
> to No-IP.info and check your ip is still current and if not update it
> like if your IP changes because your dsl line drops for a minute and
> you get a knew ip?).

Hmmm... This is interesting. I'll look up to www.no-ip.com, but I think that 
such dns trick may work only with public IP numbers. And A's IP is of type 
10.0.*.* which is a no-go, afaik.

However, I might ask the ISP to provide me with a public IP. It could still be 
dynamic, but public rather than local, and in that case the trick with the 
dns just might work... ;-)

Thanks for the pointer!

Best, :-)
Marko