NAT Connections..Need Advice

[Rubicks13]

Hello all, to make a long story short I am trying to hook up to my buds computer via remote assistance via msn 6.2 however he is behind some king of NAT based based connection sharing, and therefore essentially firewalled. I can't connect to him but he can connect to me. Is there a way to override the NAT settings or something so I can gain access to his box? He lives in a upscale complex so that is why he has no controll over the NAT based software or whatever they have set up. Any suggstions, he thougts maybe realvnp would work or even remote admin, but not sure where to go from here!
thanks

DOC

 

[Capricorn]

If he could talk to whomever administers the NAT router/firewall, he could ask that a particular port be forwarded to him (called strangely enough - "port-forwarding"). I'll assume the IP address he gets is something like 192.168.something.something or 10.something.something.something. You'd have to find out what port or ports you need for the connection. I'm guessing that's probably not doable.

Would it be possible to reverse the setup? That is, to have him connect to you instead. May not make sense for what your trying to do I suppose. Are you trying to remote admin or remote control his machine? If so, you pretty much have to connect to him, so your back to trying to get a port or ports forwarded to his machine.

 

[Rubicks13]

yes it start with 10 and yes I am trying to connect to him, and remote controll his machine. So yeah I will see what he can do. Anyone know what ports msn messenger uses?
thanks

CUBE

 

[mikesgroovin]

not sure off the top of my head what msn mess uses, but remote administrator uses 4899 (or whatever you want).

 

[Capricorn]

Is this article from Microsoft of any help? It mentions "In addition to the issues resulting from NAT addresses, which are only of concern with multiple NAT devices in the communication path, TCP port 3389 is used for the TCP connection for the Remote Assistance protocol. This means that port 3389 must be opened on any firewalls between clients." Check it out.

 

[Rubicks13]

So if I have him call his network admin and tell them to open port TCP port 3389 we should be good to go?

CUBE

 

[Capricorn]

I believe they would need to both open the port and forward it (two separate rules in some routers like Linux). Opening port 3389 says it's ok for traffic from the Internet to come in through that port. Forwarding it says that when traffic does come in on that port, forward it to port 3389 on your friend's computers at your friend's computer's internal IP address. Realize that will leave your friend's PC open to any who want to have a go at that port. You'll want to have it protected by an ecrypted login or the like. (I'm not sure what Remote Assistance offers in that regard.)