Designgeek's Stupid Question of the Week: VNC over Internet, is ssh necessary?

[designgeek]

It's another week and I have another stupid question. I'm trying to connect to a Mac Mini about 300 miles away over the internet none the less, and it won't work. I have the correct IP address and the ports are forwarded on the AEBS I'm trying to connect to. The problem is that it's not working. I type in the address and it tries to connect forever and then it says I need to enable VNC on the host computer which I've done. My question is have I still missed something? I've heard about SSH but what is it and is it necessary? All I want to do is control my mom's computer when she has a problem. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Tex-Twil]

Hi,
no, you don't need any SSH connection for this. You should be able to connect the VNC connection directly.

Which ports did you forward ? Is the VNC server (screen sharing) running ?

To check if the ports are correctly forwarded and opened, you can go to Shields Up site on your server computer and enter port number you want to check. It has to be marked as "open".

Tex

 

[angelwatt]

Technically no, SSH isn't needed for a VNC connection, but it is highly recommended for connections outside a local network. That's because VNC is inherently insecure as it passes data in plain text and someone can easily grab the password. Maybe they already have. You should always be using a SSH tunnel when using VNC outside a local network.

As for your inability to connect, are you really certain the VNC server is running on the machine? Have you tested from other machines closer to the machine?

I think iChat has some type of screen sharing capability to you may be able to leverage. I haven't done it myself so can't speak to it.

 

[Tex-Twil]

angelwatt is totally right with the security part and I should have also mention it. It is better to have it tunneled through a ssh connection.

Tex