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pkmonockus

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 8, 2008
15
0
Wellington
Connecting to your home Mac within the same network with VNC lite from the iPhone apps store is pretty straight forward.

What's even better, probably more useful and more exciting, is to connect your iphone to a Mac away from home. I've tralled the intertron and there are no real simply explained tutorials, so I'm going to explain how I did it. This also assumes that your Mac is on all the time and the IP address is not changing. If not the case, do a search on how to set a static IP address.

Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure this is reasonable secure (using OSX's built in SHH) but if not maybe someone can post a better way as I'd love to know.

What you'll need:

* iPhone running 2.0+ frimware
* VNC Lite installed on your iPhone (download from apps store free)
* Mac running OS X (10.5 in this case)
* Router connected to the internet (Airport Extreme in this case)

Step one:
If you haven't already download and install VNC Lite on your iPhone

Step two - get your internal Macs IP address:
* On your Mac go to: System Preferences > Sharing.
* Tick on the 'Screen sharing'.
* You'll should see the text 'Other users can access your computer at vnc://xx.x.x.xxx/ or browse for "xxxxxxxxxxx". (with the x being numbers and the name of you Mac. Ignore the name but write down all the numbers (xx.x.x.xxx) shown as you'll need this soon.
* Click the 'Computer settings button', check the 'VNC viewers may...' checkbox, enter a password and click OK

Step three - set up your router fro port forwarding:
* Open up AirPort Utility.
* Click the 'Manual Setup ' button at the bottom of the panel. Click the 'Advanced' icon at the top of the panel. Click the 'Port Mapping' tab. You'll see a little box with a + and - button under it. Click the +.
* It will open a new window where there will be 5 boxes to fill out. Enter '5900' for all except the 'Private IP address'. In the Private IP address enter the number you wrote down in step two and click Continue.
* On the next page enter a description - it can be anything (I entered Macmini) and click Done.
* Click update at the bottom of the AirPort utility panel and wait for your router to restart.

Step four - configuring VNC lite on your iPhone:
* Open VNC lite on your iPhone
* Add a new connection.
* get your router's IP address. If you don't know go to http://www.whatismyip.com/
* Enter that as your VNC Server IP address.
* Enter '5900'' as the VNC server port
* For the VNC password enter the password you set in step two.
* Hit 'Connect' and presto! You should now be able to connect from outside your network!

Good luck!
 
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