Filed under: Leopard
24 Hours of Leopard: Back to My Mac
Feature: Back to My Mac
How it works: For Leopard-running .Mac users who roam away from home, Back to my Mac provides a breadcrumb trail to the master machine. By registering the home IP address with the .Mac servers, B2mM lets you access your entire hard drive, transfer files, or control the screen of the remote machine without having to configure dynamic DNS or set up VPNs, VNC or anything else beginning with V.
Who will use it: Those lucky souls (.Mac subscribers only) with a Mac at home and another one at work or on the road.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jordan Weinstein said 7:03AM on 10-26-2007
Seems great, except that the remote machine cannot be hibernating. So you have to leave it constantly awake for the few times you'll ever use this feature. No wake on LAN option?
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Lukino said 7:04AM on 10-26-2007
can this work with a machine behind a nat?
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jus10 said 7:16AM on 10-26-2007
Logmein is similar: https://secure.logmein.com/products/mac/
Both yeah, both products need your Mac to be on and they'll work behind a Nat. I ended up uninstalling logmein because I always close my Macbook when I leave for work so I'd never be able to log in.
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Dias said 7:22AM on 10-26-2007
Pretty useless feature if you can't wake you computer over the network, who leave their computer turned on when they go out?
Besides Previous Version, WPF, nice_looking_gui, Apple should have ripped Vista in this area too.
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Chronocento said 7:44AM on 10-26-2007
This feature is useful for people that leave their mac on to download files or encode something. To do the wake on lan thing, I think that you'll need a router with custom firmware, and custom scripts (but I'm not aware of scripts that do such a thing)
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sparkstack said 8:24AM on 10-26-2007
DD-WRT firmware for the Linksys routers has a WOL section. Works pretty well.
@DIAS: Not sure where you are going with your argument, but MS remote desktop is unable to wake a machine from sleep too.
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Rob said 8:40AM on 10-26-2007
Hmm. This is expensive since you need a .mac account. You also need to leave you Mac at home on all the time (since there is no wake on LAN).
A MUCH better solution is to use a VPN router (like a standard off the shelf Linksys VPN router or use DD-WRT firmware on a WRT 56GL router), the free IP Secuitas VPN client software and a Network Attached Storage or NAS connected to your home router. You can access all of your files on the NAS without having to leave your Mac on (or you coulsd use the Wakeup on Lan feature in DD-WRT).
You jsut use IPSecuritas to connect to your VPN router securely. Then you can surf the internet or download files from your NAS (or you Mac).
There is also ANOTHER great benefit. You can use your VPN to surf the internet at wifi hotspots etc without the fear of being sniffed since all the communications between your computer and your VPN router are encrypted. That will save you a monthly fee if you are using services like HotSpotVPN etc.
Again the Apple solution fails short and is overly expensive. Apple you can do better.
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JSJ said 5:27PM on 12-25-2007
Let us know when the drugs wear off. IPSECuritas is for IPSEC. DDWRT does PPTP. You curiously cannot do what you are suggesting, which makes me wonder what you have ever done.
Michael Rose said 8:51AM on 10-26-2007
#7 -- Rob, thanks for the alternate solution, interesting points on encryption and VPN; I think you're missing the B2mM point though.
a) Your solution, though technically superior, requires a level of sophistication that might just be outside the comfort zone of some (not to say most) Mac users. :-)
b) This isn't the only reason to get .Mac, so "expensive" is a red herring. Yes, .Mac is expensive compared to putting together all the features yourself, but (speaking for me) my time is valuable enough that $100 would not compensate me for the 8-24 hours I'd spend cobbling all the functionality together.
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Luigi193 said 8:54AM on 10-26-2007
I need to know... do you NEED to have a NAT thing? I could never figure out how to set it up...and if ya did need it, why wouldn't you just you a vnc client?
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Michael Rose said 9:04AM on 10-26-2007
#9 -- Luigi, not sure what you mean by "a NAT thing." You need to have an Internet connection, and if it's behind a router chances are NAT is active. B2mM will work over some connections, not over others -- you'd have to try it and see.
You could just set up a VNC client, but you'd also need dynamic DNS (to keep track of the home IP address), file sharing, and possibly a VPN tunnel as well as pointed out above.
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Zoli said 9:22AM on 10-26-2007
Any idea how this will work for someone who wants to remote control someone's mac without using iChat (i.e. just remote in without them signing into ichat and accepting a screen sharing invite)
Also, how will this work for multiple clients? My company supports many mac users, and we all have them on logmein, we can see all the computers in one list and remote in whenever we want.
Is there some type of .mac for corporate environments?
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thepeggs said 10:23AM on 10-26-2007
Can you get back to your Mac from a Windows machine on the road?
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Simon Arch said 8:00PM on 10-26-2007
Doesn't the "Wake for Ethernet network administrator access" option in the Energy Saver pref pane serve as a Wake on LAN option?
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magin said 12:10AM on 10-27-2007
I've only been playing with my Leopard installs for about an hour now, but I'm loving the fact that this feature lets me run my media server headless without the lags and dropped connections I always got with VNC clients. Not the most useful part of Leopard, but it's a nice little bonus for people like me.
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Willie said 10:18AM on 12-28-2007
Hello. I can use back to my mac with no problems when i am using in the local lan when i try to use it from an external mac it don´t shows up in the finder sidebar. Can anyone help me? Back at home i have an imac with an Airport extreme connected to a D-Link DSL-G624T. Is there any configuration that i need to put in the dsl modem?
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Plazman said 6:15PM on 12-29-2007
No, there is not a .Mac for corporate environments. They have a single-user account and a family pack that includes several sub-accounts, but nothing that would be appropriate for a corporate environment.
No, you cannot get BTMM from a Windows machine on the road, it's only Leopard-to-Leopard.
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Marc said 4:32AM on 1-09-2008
I have the following network configuration at home:
DSL modem connected (wired) to an airport extreme which transmits signals to an airport express with bridging configuration.
My iMac and iBook are communicating with airport express for internet and music. Back to my Mac works within this network. However from other place I cannot connect to my iMac (iMac is not sleeping, .mac account is the same).
How can I activate NAT for this configuration to be able to use Back to My Mac from other location? Is there anything else to try?
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