Chances are you have your DSL/Cable modem hooked to a router and several computers hooked to the router to make a nice little home network. A router gives you some nice advantages by helping protect your computer from the outside world but what do you do when that protection stops you from getting into your own computer remotely? To get through and to a specific box you’ll need some software that connects from one computer to another (ssh, ftp, RDP, VNC, etc), then you’ll need to know what “port” that software uses and tell the router to forward that port to a specific computer with a static IP address. Sounds easy right? Well it’s not too bad. We’ll start with static IP addresses and port forwarding today…

Static IP Address. Your IP address is like your house’s address, without it you can’t have any packages (packets) delivered. Your local network IP Addresses are handed out by your router, you need a static IP address for port forwarding instead of the normal dynamic IP addresses. Here’s a good guide on getting your computer to tell the router it wants a specfic IP address everytime. If you are familiar with your router’s interface you may be able to accomplish the same thing there by assigning a specific IP to a specific computer name.

Port Forwarding. PortForward.com makes this super easy. Just pick your router from the huge list, then pick the program you want to forward from the equally huge list, enter the static IP for the computer you want to forward to and everything will be spelled out for you.

There are many reasons to do this but for the security of your home network keep the number of ports you have open to a minimum!