Setting up both sides of Tight VNC for remote support. Re: Noo b questions

Hello Jim:

On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 10:19 -05:00, Jim <[email protected]> wrote:
> Until recently I have been using TeamViewer to support laptops for my son in England, and my father-in-law. However, TeamViewer keeps flagging me as using the personal version for commercial purposes (I am not) so I'm turning to TightVNC.

To start with we must understand TightVNC and VNC systems in general.  As you may already know, they require two different programs on two different sides to work. One side must be the client and the other must be the server. So when connecting to your Son's desktop, You can be the "server" and your son can be the "client" (called a reverse connection), or your son can be the server and you can be the client.  The usual way is for the person needing help being the server-side. 

Both of you have a firewall in front of the network that blocks incoming (started outside your network) connections.  Because of this, the router on the server-side has to change it's configuration to forward specific ports related to your application. 

Your father-in-law and son are both external to you, and you are external to them. To make a connection, the connecting computer must tunnel though the firewall.  If your son is the server, he must change the router on his side.  If you are the server, you should modify the router on your side.   Here is a link to VNC concepts:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Network_Computing


> 
> I can easily use TVNC inside my house to connect to other computers. Is there a way to save the connection info in a vnc file so that I do not have to re-enter the password every time I want to connect?
You can have TightVNC save your password for you.  The way I know of is to use the client program to save the password in the connection settings.  As you mentioned, the connection settings are written to a .vnc file.  At the end of this email is a sample one.

Here is a link to one idea how to do that.
https://superuser.com/questions/116853/how-to-save-connection-settings-in-tightvnc-viewer#:~:text=When%20you%20have%20the%20settings,to%20launch%20your%20remote%20session 

Maybe you can other useful answers with Google search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=can+I+save+passwords+in+tightvnc

> 
> There are instructions on setting up port forwarding to access a computer behind a firewall but this does not really help when I need to connect to the two external computers I mentioned above. In the case of an on-site router I have access to the router, physically and by address. How can I set up a connection to my son's computer across the Atlantic?
Port forwarding is what allows external computers to connect in to the server side. So, your son would have to change the port config on his router. See www.portforward.com for step-by-step help on setting up port forwarding for many different situations. 

By by the way, there are other remote desktop systems like TeamViewer where it is not necessary to know these details.  You might want to try Google's Chrome Remote Desktop -- https://remotedesktop.google.com/  It doesn't require router configuration changes and it is free.

Here is a comparison of a crapload remote desktop products if TightVNC or Google's will not work for you:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_remote_desktop_software

Contents of a sample .vnc file:
---------------------------------------------------------
[connection] 
host=173.11.11.11  ;not real 
port=5967
password=c7d9138805a0ccd1
[options]
use_encoding_1=1
copyrect=1
viewonly=0
fullscreen=0
8bit=0
shared=1
belldeiconify=1
disableclipboard=0
swapmouse=0
fitwindow=0
cursorshape=1
noremotecursor=0
preferred_encoding=7
compresslevel=-1
quality=6
localcursor=1
scale_den=1
scale_num=1
local_cursor_shape=1
---------------------------------------------------------

Note "c7d9138805a0ccd1" is not the literal password. It's been encoded.

I hope some of this helps. All the best. 

 -Matt Johnson

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