I have several clients that live in other cities around the world. I have one particular users that is living in JAPAN. Her apartment has several network drops and here building is behind a firewall. She is running Win XP and I had her enable remote access and when she gave me her IP address, it was an internal one.

My question is :

How can I access her pc remotely when it is behind a firewall without having to bug her building LAN administrator? Can I access her computer through the internet through port 80? Please help!

no. have her bug her network administrator. to tell you the truth, this sounds like wannabe script kiddie question.

This is not a script kiddie question, I am looking at this issue from a support aspect. This is not for malicious purposes. I am just trying to support my customers. I can see where you are comming from. I quess they are more security concious over seas. Can anyone guide me in the right direction.

The thing is, there isn't anything you can do. She is going to have to bug the building's network admin. Only the building's network admin can punch a hole through the building's firewall and forward requests to the right computer. You'll also need to have their network administrator give you a way to make contact with this machine.

It's just not overseas either. If you were to ask me this and I was a network administrator, I wouldn't do it either. I predict you're going to have to do support the old fashioned way, through email.

I understand. I was comparing companies like HP and others and how they can come into your system via a client program or through an http connection. If you call they will only come in through your consent and you being the administrator of your own machine that is ok. I thought that I would give it shot. I will be the bearer of bad news.

Many thanks.

I've been happy using realvnc lately, and have been connecting through the customer's firewall through a port 5900 hole to get the the :0 display. See the realvnc.com FAQ on how to set this up.

Now if you can't open up port 5900 on the customer's network there is a way to make a reverse connection initiated by the customer back to your viewer.
I did read about the method but haven't tried it yet. Take a look at the vncconfig function, -connect option...
Edit: Actually I was not telling the whole store above,
You really want to use a secure ssh tunnel for this sort of thing.
This includes using a dsa key or something similar.

Once this is established use vncviewer to localhost and its tunneled to the other computer over the internet in an encrypted channel.

You'll want the customer to have the same setup going back to you, making the outbound connection to your listening viewer.

another other way to do it (if you're both using windows) is to get her to request remote assistance in msn messenger

Well your not going to get very far if you don't have her real ip. Unless ofcourse, you're in the same building.

If you are, then the router firewall is'nt even an issue.(usually) Its as simple as this

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...moteintro.mspx