Ask TUAW: Control a Mac from a PC?

I am not adept at vnc or vpn or ssh or anything. I am good with a GUI, but don't know too much about networking. Are there any good guides that will teach me how to port forward, and tunneling, and how to set up osxvnc on the mac, and chickenofthevnc or realvnc or whatever on the pc? I have a friend that told me he does it by accessing his router through dyndns, and then turns on the forwarding or something, and then begins his vnc session. When finished, he reverses the process. This sounds safe, and he is going to help me do it (maybe), but I would like to know how to do it myself incase anything goes awry.

There is a built-in Apple-made VNC server that you can activate in place of OSXvnc by activating Apple Remote Desktop in the Sharing pane of System Preferences, clicking on Privileges and enabling the "VNC clients can control the screen with password:" option. However, many have found this client to be less stable than OSXvnc.

Cheers Marcello Thanks for the link

I use OSXvnc and Realvnc on my Windows laptop. The iMac is behind both a router and an Airport Extreme (double NAT addressing) and I never had any problems, neither on a wired nor a wireless connection. However, due to my DSL upload bandwidth (200 kbps) I set the vnc client to use 64 colours only when I am away. Right now I'm writing from Hong Kong and accessing my Mac in Switzerland flawlessly, no session timeouts. Someone mentioned in a previous post about a "built-in" vnc server? what is that? (ok I admit it, a I'm a newcomer to the Mac....) iFelix, you might want to check out AirControl (http://www.wolaver.net/aircontrol.html) to control Itunes on a Mac from a Windows Mobile PDA. It works great!

I installed OSXvnc on my G5 (which holds my music), I installed a VNC client on my iPAQ. Connected to the G5, now this was a bit slow, but more than fast enough to control iTunes (in shrunk mode). Not quite what you were asking, but certainly showing what is possible with VNC and OSXvnc.

I use Remote Desktop on my Mini and RealVNC on the Windows but I experience several problems First one: "unknown message type. Do you wish to attempt to reconnect to ?" when I try to connect. The second try works ok The second one: ARP client freezes mainly with my wireless connection and I need to connect via ssh to relaunch it I try realvnc and tightvnc with the same problems On the other side I use RealVnc server on my Windows and Chicken for the Mac box

I run UltraVNC on my office XP Pro box to control my Tiger system in the home office. The Mac is configured with OSXvnc, which runs as a service. UltraVNC has excellent custom settings to maximize the screen redraws on the remote Mac. Since my Mac is behind a router, I configured port forwarding and also use No-IP.com Update client to adjust to any changes in the dynamic IP that Comcast can change on me. On the Mac, I run MS Remote Desktop through our corporate Cisco VPN (using VPC) to remote control numerous Windows boxen at our offices.

Unfortunately, the way the Mac draws your screen makes it very difficult for VNC-like clients to capture it efficiently (Windows has a concept of a "damaged area" that needs to be redrawn that VNC can capture immediatly after the redrawing without having to get the whole screen; however, Mac OS X's Quartz redraws only when needed and does not signal applications when it does so, so VNC doesn't either; the server has to capture the whole screen repeatedly and send it to you, which takes more bandwidth and makes it all slower.)

Great answers! I will check out OSXvnc. I have been using Apple's built-in Remote Desktop VNC server. The sessions I get last maybe 5 or 10 minutes before freezing up and locking me out. When I check the eMac, it is running fine. ssh is great, but it doesn't let me surf our CMS in Safari from my PC. My PC laptop is wireless, yes, but the only place I can plug it in and have a fully wired setup is right next to my eMac, at which point I don't need to use remote control since I'm already there... As far as the speed goes, I get better responsiveness from a Windows server across the country than I get from my Mac in my own house (even with the session colors turned way down to 256 or 16). I hope OSXvnc isn't as slow as the built-in Remote Desktop VNC.

If you enable VNC access with a password in the ARD client, then you can use TIGHTVNC from Windows (works better than RealVNC especially over wireless) from the Windows side. I use it all the time for servers and my desk machine from home over VPN. Also, RDC on OSX to control my Windows boxes when working on my OSX desktop...so, From either platform I can get to the other.