just wanted to thank everyone who helped on the threads regarding VNC. I managed to access my home computer from my workplace today, easy peasy!
refresh rate was pretty good with 3G, fairly viewable on the N900 screen.
This was what i did :
1. Install RealVNC on Host PC, run VNC Server (open up port 5900.) Set up password.
2. Configure Host PC to a static IP address (in my case, 10.01.33)
2. Configure router to which my Host PC was connected to allow port forwarding (Map port 5900 on IP 10.0.1.33
3. I kept getting conflicting external IP address of my Host PC (whatismyip.com) so I signed up for an account at DynDNS.com. This allows you to substitute your XX.XX.XX.XX ip address to 'yourname.yourdns'. IT'S FREE. I selected 'myname.mine.nu'
4. Install VNC Viewer from extras-testing repository on N900
5. type in 'myname.mine.nu' in the VNC Viewer IP address bar, entered password
6. View and control your home PC from your N900.
Caveats :
1. This requires a fairly quick data connection
2. I selected to disable animation transitions and wallpaper when a remote vnc client was connected to help speed up actions
3. I set my home PC desktop resolution to 800x600. This means almost the whole desktop fits on the N900 screen. I only need to scroll up and down, entire desktop width fits within the N900 screen'
4. Battery hog hog hog
I had no idea what VNC or remote desktop was, and spent a good hour or so sifting through threads on VNC on the internet combined with tips from the maemo threads. I hope this guide helps others get VNC working.
if someone wanted to i'm pretty sure they could find a way in. i don't use wifi on the n900, i access VNC via a 3G connection. as long as you put something on the internet there is a chance, no matter how little, of compromised security.
i guess it all depends on how important the VNC ability on the N900 is to you.
Well personally VNC is way too slow from my personal experience to do anything productive with it therefore rendering it useless to me.
Even at home, over my own wifi, I have refresh rate no better than ~1frame/20sec
Too frustrating to use...
Dunno if that's normal
how secure is the login?
in other words how safe is it to use VNC over a public wifi without fearing someone 'sniffing' for passwords?
It's very insecure. The initial VNC login & password is encrypted, but everything after that is sent in the clear. Anyone listening could reconstruct the view of your desktop, as well as any keystrokes sent during the session.
You're strongly recommended to use an encrypted tunnel of some sort (VPN, ssh, etc) to secure this. The commercial versions of RealVNC include built-in encryption, but this is not compatible with any of the free versions (including the N900 viewer) so has to be disabled to use these.
I've written some instructions on setting up VNC over SSH here, if anyone's interested.
I have done all of this but all I get is "Connection failed", sadly. Should it be 'Windows password' or 'VNC Password'?
VNC Password - if you're using the commercial versions of RealVNC (enterprise/personal) then you'll need to set the encryption to "prefer-on" (or "prefer-off") as the N900 VNC viewer doesn't support this.
i get a pretty decent refresh rate of 1fps. i opened the time/clock settings in windows 7 from the n900 VNC viewer and I can see the second hand on the time clock moving in sync.
