ARD over Internet (different Apple ID's)

I am trying to get ARD to work from my home network to an elder family member without success.

Home Computer
Macbook Air
Lion 10.8.3
ARD 3.6.1
Time Capsule with port forwarding Open for ARD
Apple ID - Mine


Remote Location
Mac Mini solid state
Lion 10.8.3
ARD Client 3.6.1
Time Capsule with port forwarding open for ARD
Apple ID - HIS
Set his TC and computer to configured grab 10.0.1.50. DHCP from a cable internet service, so shared IP in the house but force his to 10.0.1.50 within his network.
Ethernet connected to his TC
Remote management and login selected in sharing for this client.

Right now just testing it locally until I can move it accros the country

Obeserve/Control while we are on the local network but not remote. Please help me with the steps to complete. I have not used ARD before, just back to my mac. Unfortunately we cannot share the same apple ID

Consultant said:

Can the person "accept" screen control requests via messages app? If yes, just use messages for remote control.

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Thank you. This is a possibility however not optimal since the person is a quadriplegic and uses a head house. Don't want him to always be wired up if possible. I will play with message, had not considered that.

Consultant said:

Can the person "accept" screen control requests via messages app? If yes, just use messages for remote control.

Click to expand...

After a little investigation it appears that with iMessages you have to have and AOL account. I would like to stay inside of the apple ecosystem if possible. I'm sure it must be possible to get ARD to work but am having difficulty navigating the last steps to enable getting to his IP.

Working with iMessage

chrfr said:

It will, it's a fully functional AIM account.

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Cool. I am all set up now just establishing each iCloud with AIM and putting his computer to have iMessage as a hidden log in item. Went back to setting and removed remote management and just selected screen sharing.

Thanks all for your tips and help. The not want to fail part of me would still like to get ARD working someday outside of my local network but this will work for now.

Usually simple is better

DJLC said:

Just to confirm: it sounds like you might only have a local entry in ARD for your family member's Mac. You'll need to manually add an entry with his external / public IP address to connect remotely. You can do this by going to File -> Add by Address.

I have used ARD remotely before; it works, but the overall usability depends on the speed of the internet connection at each end. For what you need to do, it's a much better option than any AIM / iCloud crap.

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And since he is behind an airport extreme then have his machine grab the same IP each time and use something like IP chicken to find his real IP and use that in the add by address section?

DJLC said:

Pretty much. The remote connection works like this: you enter his public/external IP address into ARD. ARD then sends a request to that address. The AirPort Extreme on the other end sees this traffic coming in, and because of the port forwarding rules sends the traffic on to his Mac.

Ideally, your setup would be like this: static public IP from internet service provider -> AirPort Extreme giving out static internal IP to target Mac + port forwarding for ARD to that static IP. And then you'll just have two entries in ARD; one with the static IP from the internet service provider, and one with the static IP from the AirPort Express. The former will only work remotely, and the latter will only work locally.

All that said, you're not likely to get a static IP from most residential ISPs. You may want to look in to an option like DynDNS to get around that; in this case you'd enter your DynDNS domain name into ARD instead of your IP address.

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I've already shipped his mac mini back before getting additional info on ARD but I have some folks at the receiving end that can help. Think I will try it.

Working on a test machine

Since I have another machine iMac, I was able to test ARD and having it working now over WAN.

I see my error before was not putting the IP address I am forcing the system to grab when setting up port forwarding in the time capsule. If you take the defaults when adding ARD port forwarding it is 10.0.1.201 201

If you stay with apple hardware end to end then, this is easy (with tips from this forum). I have an apple router at each end with my apple ID so it is easy to obtain the IP address of the provider.

I setup the time capsule on the client end to "reserve" an IP address specifically to his machine MAC address so that IP is not handed out to any other machine. In the network settings I set it to DHCP with Manual IP and I assign the IP I would like the system to use. I made one for ethernet and one for WiFI on both the client and the router.

Since I have back to mac configured it is easy to go to that router and see what IP the internet provider is provided as the IP to the router. I use this IP as my target IP in ARD.

I like the fact that you can move files, run reports and the screen control is smooth with ARD. I love apple products.

steve123 said:

There is another way using BTMM. Create your own user account on the machine and enter your own AppleID into that account. The client can have their own AppleID connected to their own account so you do not have to share an AppleID. Enable BTMM on your account in the icloud settings. You can then use BTMM to get to the machine including screen sharing and file sharing.

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OK, I can see how BTMM would then get me back to that client machine if I set up my own account and Apple ID on it. Just tested that approach. That seems much better then then iChat model but of course only works when you have a client that allows you to have an ID on the machine which in this case I do. I can see some benefits of this, ease of configuration and less management of knowing the providers incoming IP.