Stupid Screen Sharing question

[vicrock]

So I finally got my office iMac upgraded to Leopard - and have set screen sharing up on both that machine and my laptop, with the idea that I can remotely access the other over the 'net.

But I must me missing something - when I open screen sharing and type in the vnc:// address, it does not connect - what am I missing?

[M A V I C]

Are both your iMac and laptop running Leopard?

Is port forwarding enabled or do you have an external IP on the remote machine?

Is the firewall setup to block VNC?

[vicrock]

Both running Leopard

Please explain in simple terms how to check "is port forwarding enabled or do you have an external IP on the remote machine? "

Office machine - cable modem - netgear router wireless connection - laptop at home running on dsl with the wireless modem that Qwest gave us.

[Gareth]

Unless you've enabled port forwarding, it's not enabled. You need to set it up in the Netgear router's and/or the Qwest wireless modem.

But, since there are several variables there, some simple ways around it are:

Use "Back to my Mac" with .Mac, or

Use Chax (add on to iChat, search versiontracker.com for "Chax") to auto-accept screen sharing settings, then set up a couple of free AIM accounts, one for each machine (and set Chax to only accept sessions from your accounts). Using Chax and iChat is all free, but means you have to keep iChat running on the target machine. Also, iChat's screen sharing runs a little differently than the standard screen sharing (it automatically sets up an audio connection as well, so be sure to disable the microphones).

[vicrock]

Thanks - I will give chax a try

[Tofer]

[quote vicrock]Thanks - I will give chax a try
This is a good idea, but once you get port forwarding worked out, the Screen Sharing connection is very nice. I might spend a bit of time looking into how to do that (instructions are all over the interwebitubes).

-Tofer