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Back To My Mac: Anyone Successful?

LeeTom

LeeTom

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 31, 2004
1,587
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So I've got my Mac Mini home theater setup with a digital projector, and I've been using Screen Sharing to access it and control it from my PowerBook.
Totally Awesome!

I attempted to use Back To My Mac today to access it from work and see if I couldn't control it, but no dice! Both the Mac Mini and PowerBook are signed into my .Mac account, with "Back To My Mac", Screen Sharing, and File Sharing ON. I have a new Apple Extreme Base Station (802.11n)...

So far all I've done is log out of and back into .Mac on the Mini to make sure it knows what's up, but I've got to wait until tomorrow to get back into work.

HAVE ANY OF YOU GOTTEN THIS TO WORK?

Any tips appreciated,
Thanks!
Lee Tom
 
Have you tried this from home (computer to computer)? Most universities (and I would assume many workplaces- especially over wireless networks) block the ports used for outgoing gmail messages, video chats, and this back to my mac feature. I would start there if it works on your home network, the problem is most likely a blocked port.

That being said, Apple has acknowledged some problems with back to my mac and big name techies such as Leo Laporte have reported problems with this feature as well.

So.. it may not be you.

EDIT: Alternatively, although this is a bit of a pain in the ass, you can always write down your home IP address and finder > go > connect to server (or command + K) and mount your home drive from work. This should work every time.
 
Its spotty at best but I never can get it to work right.

It may be blocked ports as suggested.

In my case I could access my PowerBook at work from my iMac at home. Yet at work I could only see the iMac, not access it.

Some have suggested going to the sharing pane and turing off screen charing, file sharing. Then in the .Mac preference pane turn off Back to Mac and then sign out of .Mac.

Now turn the screen and file sharing on, login to .Mac and turn Back to Mac back on. Dont forget to turn syncing back on if it turns off.
 
I actually control the network at my work (a very small business). So ports are open, but none are specifically mapped as of now.
Although, that shouldn't be necessary if I'm requesting BackToMyMac from work, as my home AirportExtreme router should be doing the work.

I will try doing direct IP address connections and logout/login stuff as suggested, and write back tomorrow.

Thanks!
 
No Dice!
The Mac Mini doesn't show up in Finder... No firewall on the remote (PowerBook) end, and I'm using a new Apple BaseStation on the home end, correctly configured no less...

Any ideas? Has ANYONE gotten BTMM to work?

Thanks,
Lee Tom
 
I have a new Apple Extreme Base Station (802.11n)...
Click to expand...

How do you have your base station set up? Are you using it as a DHCP router, and sharing one IP address between your Mac Mini and your Powerbook at home? If so, trying to connect to your home IP address won't work, it'll just get stuck at your router. In that case you'll need to set up port forwarding. What port does BTMM use?
 
Not sure what Back to My Mac is, but I do exactly what your asking to do everyday from anywhere in the world. I use VNC and port forwarding (at my Mini's location).

In a nutshell, I have my Mini on a static LAN IP (192.168.1.x), and then have my router's firewall port open for 5900 (VNC). Then from work (on a Vista box) I use a VNC program to access my world IP and access port 5900. Boom, got it. Its not too tough.
 
The only time I can get it to work is when the computers are on the same network. Even then about 75% of the time the other computer shows up as "shared" and only shows up as "back to my mac" about 25% of the time.


Apple make me sad....:mad:
 
GimmeSlack12 said:
Not sure what Back to My Mac is, but I do exactly what your asking to do everyday from anywhere in the world. I use VNC and port forwarding (at my Mini's location).

In a nutshell, I have my Mini on a static LAN IP (192.168.1.x), and then have my router's firewall port open for 5900 (VNC). Then from work (on a Vista box) I use a VNC program to access my world IP and access port 5900. Boom, got it. Its not too tough.
Click to expand...

The back to my mac was a nice reason why we spend $100 on this stupd .mac that does not give us half of what was promised.
 
The "Lovely" BTMM

I got my first MAC about 6 months ago the white 20 inch imac...of course the new fabulous one came out about a month later! About a month ago I upgraded to Leopard.

Then about 2 weeks ago I got a 17" Macbook Pro and was super excited to learn of the BTMM feature.

Welll...when I am at home on my wireless network everything is fine...works great... unfortunately that's not much help. This feature is all about gaining mobility.

I use a Verizon aircard on my MBpro and am unable to get BTMM to work with that. I also looked on the Mac sire and when it lists compatible home routers (I have a 2wire 2700hg-B from ATT) mine is at the top of the list. SO iam stumped here.

I have et to try it on something other than my aircard like simple another wireless network to see if its the aircard but after what I am reading here I think it's not that.

Anyone else in a similar funk?:confused::confused::confused:
 
Again, if you're having trouble using BTMM outside your home network, check to see if you're using a DHCP/NAT router. This may be the source of your trouble.

If you are running a DHCP router at home, you could be running into one of two problems:

1.) You're using your LAN IP to connect to your Mac - Your static LAN IP is assigned to your Mac by a DHCP router. It usually starts with "192.168.". This is not your real IP address - it only works when you're inside your home network. In order to connect to your LAN from outside you'll need your external IP address (the "real" one) which you can find in your router settings, or from your ISP.

2.) You're using the right IP address, but you don't have port forwarding - Even if you are using the right IP, once your connection reaches your router, it won't know which mac to go to. As far as it knows, once it's reached your router, it's reached its destination. You need to set up port forwarding in your router settings. This tells your router to send all connections for a given service (e.g. SFTP, SSH, Back to My Mac) to the Mac behind it. I think BTMM uses port 4500. If you set up forwarding for that port, it should work. Check your router's manual for more info on port forwarding.

Finally, if you do get it to work, keep in mind that port 4500 will be wide open to anyone on the internet. This is just part of the risk of setting up BTMM in this way. Make sure you have a good system password, or better yet, use OS X's firewall to close the port when you don't need it.

Good luck!
 
Back To My Mac is supposed to work without port forwarding... if you have a router that uses NAT-PMP or uPnP.
 
Back To My Mac works for me in some circumstances. By "works," I mean I can see my other Mac under "Shared" in the sidebar without doing anything by hand or touching any IPs or port forwards.

It works when one Mac is connected to the net through my Verizon wireless data connection and the other is on my regular wireless network at home.

It works when one Mac is on the network at my parents' home in another state, with a different ISP, and the other is on my regular wireless network at home.

In both those situations I'm getting a dynamic IP from the router, and it changes regularly.

It does NOT work when either Mac is at my office, which leads me to suspect the hardware firewall there is blocking it. Which, honestly, seems sensible to me.

It does require a .Mac membership, which I haven't seen anyone remind anyone in this thread. Supposedly .Mac handles the DNS for it. If you're fooling around with IP addresses and forwarding ports, or if you're running a VNC server or client, you're not using Back To My Mac.
 
I spend almost all day trying to get this to work, again.

As I posted before it was a one way street.

My setup is DLS at home with a Linksys router, from where I can sometimes access my PowerBook at work.

At work I have cable modem with the AirPort extreme acting as router.

So today I was at work. As is ALWAYS the case I can see my iMac in the sidebar but can not connect. I found that if I got my powerbook on a REAL IP by directly connecting it worked fine, but the other computers has problems since the cable company assigned random IPs that were pointing to separate routers. It was a mess. I then put the AirPort into the setup again. This time in bridge mode, again it worked but the PC IPs were an issue.

I tried manually assigned IPs on the PCs, while that fix the issue with them taking to each other, they could not get online to process credit cards.

So I tried all sorts of combos. NAT on, adding the 4500 port and not, manual IPs, etc. I could not find a combo that worked.

So I gave up and it started working fine!

It really is spotty. Yes I did re-start the services on the Mac and re-boot it, etc.... many times.

So I have my Airport handing out 10.X to all the Macs and PCs. NAT is enabled with no port forwarding setup. Not sure what got it working, it really is the same way that I started with weeks ago_Of course I can no longer access my PowerBook... Its like I reversed the setup. <sigh>
 
I've been experimenting, and I think that Back To My Mac may REQUIRE uPNP or NAT-PMP. It won't work if the ports are open, it requests those ports to be open from those protocols, and if there's no response, there's no B2MM.

I'm going to do some more spearimentin' over the weekend.

lee tom
 
Well mine is still working.

Airport at work is setup to share a public, IP and distribute 10.X.X.X - has to be for NAT. NAT is turned on, nothing setup in port mapping. The connection is cable access. PowerBook G4 over Airport.

At home its DSL with a Linksys router. Basically the same setup but the iMac I have is wired.

Really nothing changed, not sure why it magically works now - wish I did so I could help :(
 
Mine works fine and has been fairly stable and reliable. The only time I ran into an issue was when I turned off the 'back-to-my-mac' feature on my Macbook Pro thinking perhaps I didn't have to have it on on the 'client' but turns out that it needed to be on on both machines.
 
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