The nice thing about NAT is that the router does it automatically. Port-forwarding has to be set up manually, unless you can fathom the mysteries of uPnP (which I'm not sure I can). In the situation you describe, the router to which the listening client is attached would need port-forwarding to be configured. At the other end NAT would take care of things without intervention. Which is why listening clients are so useful, and in some situations a huge advantage over Remote Desktop, which can't do this.
Philip Herlihy -----Original Message----- From: vnc-list-boun...@realvnc.com [mailto:vnc-list-boun...@realvnc.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Woods Sent: 27 September 2009 14:17 To: 'Philip Herlihy'; 'Dale Eshelman' Cc: vnc-list@realvnc.com Subject: RE: No-IP and Real VNC on multiple PC's > My understanding of NAT is that a router must be able to > associate multiple connections (possibly connectionless UDP > conversations) between its LAN clients and external stations > which can see only the router as a single entity. So, if a > UDP datagram arrives from a station on the WAN the router > must be able to “remember” which of its clients it should be sent to. > > > > Port forwarding is a fixed configuration, where a connection > on a particular port (e.g. 5900 or 5500) is always routed to > a particular client. The most helpful routers allow the port > to be translated, so you can connect to the router on port > 8903 or port 8904 and the router will send the connection to > 10.0.0.3 or 10.0.0.4 respectively, while translating the port > on the LAN side to 5900. Entirely accurate; apologies for any confusion from my earlier response. I was not attempting to conflate static port forwarding with NAT (I was just indicating that if his router can happily handle NAT, it should be able to support multiple port forwards ;) The NAT capabilities might come in to play if the server is set to connect to an external listening client... _______________________________________________ VNC-List mailing list VNC-List@realvnc.com To remove yourself from the list visit: http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list _______________________________________________ VNC-List mailing list VNC-List@realvnc.com To remove yourself from the list visit: http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list
