External IP’s, Domains and DNS
IP Addresses
In order to connect remotely to your computer from anywhere in the world, you need to know your Internet Protocol (IP) address. An IP address is a series of four numbers between 0 and 255, (for example, 251.35.132.1 or 69.72.201.190) which uniquely identifies your computer on the Internet. An easy way to get this address is to go to http://www.whatismyip.com/. This is the magic series of numbers we enter into the remote connection client to connect to our computer from anywhere in the world.
Before you start memorizing your current IP address, it is important to understand how your Internet Service Provider (ISP) handles the assignment of an IP. There are two ways ISP’s distribute IP’s, either you are assigned a static IP or you have a dynamic IP. It is important to understand how each works so you can property configure remote connection to always be available.
Static IP’s, simply put, do not change. Once you are assigned an IP address by your ISP, the IP never changes. Usually you have to pay extra to have a static IP. Conversely, if you have a dynamic IP, your IP address will change. Dynamic IP’s are assigned though a service called Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) where your computer is assigned an IP from a pool of unassigned IP’s. ISP’s typically use dynamic IP’s because they can support more customers with fewer IP’s. To clarify how this is possible, consider a static IP is assigned to your computer even when you are not online, however a dynamic IP is released from your computer when you are not online so someone else can use it. Because of this, dynamic IP’s work well for ISP’s who deal in very large scale. All this said, which one do you have? As a rule of thumb, if you do not know, you most likely, and should assume, you have a dynamic IP.
Domains and DNS
Regardless of which kind of IP you have, to make your life easier you should definitely register a domain (I recommend GoDaddy as a registrar). In fact if you have a dynamic IP (again, you probably do) you are going to need one in order to be able to consistently connect remotely.
A domain is basically a human readable form for an IP. For example, my domain, 132solutions.com, is simply an alias for the IP address 216.154.204.201. Needless to say, it is a lot easier to remember a domain name as opposed to an IP address. The relationship between these two is connected by a Domain Name System (DNS) server. DNS provides the “magic” which simply maps a domain name to an IP, such that when you reference 132solutions.com, the Internet knows to use the IP 216.154.204.201.
Putting It Together
The relevance of the above to remote connection involves both convenience and availability. If you have a static IP, it is strictly for convenience, as all you need to do is bind your domain to your IP. However, if you have a dynamic IP, you cannot simply bind the two because your IP can change. To handle a dynamic IP, you can either update it manually each time it changes (not really practical), or use a Dynamic DNS service such as DynDNS to automatically detect IP changes and update your DNS records. DynDNS, in my opinion, is a good choice because they are free and offer clients which support Windows, Linux and Mac. Registering for an account is easy and they provide links to client applications you can install on your system to keep your domain and IP address in sync.
If you have any trouble either registering a domain or setting up DNS, good resources for help are either the applicable vendor or the PC Mech Forums.
All this said, once you have configured everything above, all you need to do is open the remote connection client on a computer connected to the Internet from anywhere in the world, enter your domain name and click “connect” to access your home computer. As stated earlier, once you have it set up, it just works.
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Great artical only one thing wrong can’t see any of the images.
Great job. Keep up the good work.
It this also included in your book on “build your own network”?
Thanx
Another remote access tool to take a look at is I’m InTouch – http://www.imintouch.net – that costs about half the price of GoToMyPC. It also has a neat feature of letting you access your outlook email and transfer files from almost any mobile phone.
how to make a remote desktop connection in linux?