April Tutor
Remote Control Your PC ●
remote
control your PC
Being able to take control of your PC from anywhere on the planet via ICP/IP offers you the chance
to fix problems; or just access the contents of your PC wherever you are. In this guide we detail
how you can connect to your office PC through programs such as pcAnywhere in a number of dif-
ferent scenarios so that you can get yourself connected, anytime, any place...
emote control programs such as
R Carbon Copy, Lap-
Link, NetOp and
pcAnywhere let you
connect to your host comput-
er over a direct cable, a LAN,
a phone line or the Internet.
The last choice has the ad-
vantage, because you can use
your office system from just
about anywhere with a local
call, instead of having to pay
long distance phone
charges.
The hard part is that the
remote system needs to
know the host’s IP address
in order to connect. This
is not a problem in a large
corporation with a per-
manent Internet connec-
tion such as a T1 line, or
even in a small business
connected permanently
by a fractional T1 line,
cable modem or DSL. In
t h e s e s i tu a ti on s , y o u
have the same IP address
at all times.
But there’s a problem if
you connect by modem. ISPs
usually assign a different IP ad-
dress every time the modem con-
88 April 2000
nects. Before you can use remote con-
trol software over the Inter-
net, you have to know the
host’s IP address.
The good news is that
even if your main sys-
tem connects to the In-
t e rnet strictly by mo-
dem, you can still take
ad vanta ge of re m o t e
c o n t rol over the Inter-
net.
There are four possi-
ble situations, depend-
ing on two factors: first,
you may be using a pro-
gram like pcAnywhere
9.0, which offers special
features that make find-
ing a host’s IP addre s s
easy. Alternatively, you
may be using a
p ro g r a m — i n c l u d i n g
earlier versions of
p c A n y w h e re — t h a t
doesn’t help you find the
host’s IP. For both of these
possibilities, you may or
may not be able count on
someone being in your office
when you need to connect.
In this article, we’ll discuss the
strategies available for connecting
www.DITnet .co.ae
in three of these four situa-
tions. The fourth—con-
necting to a system when
no one’s in the office and
with no feature in the
p rogram to help you
find the host over the
Internet—is not worth
wasting time on. You’re
better off upgrading to
a program that provides
the support to help you
find the IP Address.
We won’t discuss es-
tablishing a connection,
s in c e th i s d epen ds o n
your spec ific p ro g r a m .
You should be able to get
this information from the
s o f t w a re vend or i n an y
case. You should also check
with the program vendor for
hints on keeping your office
sy s t em s ec ur e w h en it ’s
logged on to the Internet and
waiting for a call.
IF SOMEONE IS IN THE OFFICE
Knowing that someone will be in the of-
fice when you call means not having to
worry whether the system is connected
to the Internet when you want to log on,
or even whether the system is on. A quick
■ www.pcmag -mideast.com
 Tutor April

● Remote Control Your PC

a d d ress by running phone.

ICQ (a program and Setting your system to connect auto-
online service avail- matically to your ISP and to launch the
able at www.icq.com) host program on boot-up is also straight-
on both host and re- forward. Most remote control programs
mote systems. ha ve so me wa y to be a ut omat ic all y
launched in host mode so that the system
IF NO ONE’S IN THE is ready to take a call. In pcAnywhere,
OFFICE for example, you’ll find a check box in
Even if you can’t the host properties to Launch with Win-
co unt on someone dows. For other programs, you may have
being in your off i c e to add a shortcut to the program in your
to help set up a ses- StartUp folder. Depending on your ver-
sion, your strategy for sion of Windows, you may be able to drag
establishing a remote the shortcut to the Start Menu, then to
session is straightfor- Programs and then to StartUp. Alterna-
ward, as long as the tively, you can use Windows Explorer to
program offers some copy the shortcut into C:\Windows\Start
Figure 1: This standard Windows utility quickly displays your Internet-con- way for you to get the Menu\Programs\StartUp.
nected machine’s IP address.
host’s IP address. Once you’ve set the program to start au-
The only new twist tomatically, create a shortcut for the Dial-
(read: inexpensive) voice call to the of- in this situation is that you have to set up Up Networking entry for your ISP and
fice will be enough to get the system set your system to do everything automati- add that to your StartUp folder, too. You’ll
for an incoming call and get you the in- cally: turn on, call your ISP and load the also need a program like RtvReco (share-
f o rmation you need to make the con- host software so it’s ready for you to log w a re available at www.rtvsoft.demon
nection. on from a remote location. .co.uk/Default.htm) to automate the en-
Your strategy in this case would be to Turning the system on is easy with a re- tire process of pressing the Connect but-
make the voice call, then ask your helper mote power switch, such as the Server ton and issuing other necessary com-
to set up the system as necessary—which Technology’s Remote Power On/Off+Aux mands. You can also set RtvReco to make
might include turning it on and will in- (www2.servertech.com) or the Deltron- sure that Windows re-connects if the con-
clude connecting to your ISP. Once con- ix Remote Power Switch (www.deltron- nection is lost.
nected, some programs will make find- ix.com). The Server Technology switch The final result should be that when you
ing the IP address simple. With pcAny- will turn your system on when you call call your system and turn the power on
where 9.0, for example, you’ll find the IP and then turn it off after you hang up, remotely, the system boots up, connects
address in the Host Status screen that also waiting as little as 2 minutes or as long as to the Internet, loads the host software and
confirms the program is waiting for a call. an hour, based on your settings. The Del- waits for you to start the session. You can
For programs that don’t hand you the tronix switch lets you turn the system on then use the feature your remote control
IP address, Microsoft Windows 95 and and off manually by calling in and punch- program offers to let you find the right IP
98’s Winipcfg does the job. Choose Start ing in a command from a touch tone address, log on and do your work.
| Run, then enter the program name and
choose OK (see Figure 1). (You could also
run the DOS utility Ipconfig, which re-
quires opening a DOS window, a longer
wait and then closing the lingering DOS
window.) A still more elegant choice is
to create a shortcut to run Winipcfg from
the desktop, the Start menus or the Quick
Start toolbar.
However your helper gets the IP ad-
dress, he or she can read the number to
you, after which you hang up, establish
a connection to the Internet on your side
and enter the host’s address in the ap-
propriate place in the program.
If your helper is too rushed to give you
the information but your remote opera-
tions program offers a way to get the IP
address automatically, then all the helper
has to do is establish the host PC’s inter-
net connection. With pcAnywhere, you
can set the remote system to scan every
IP address available through your ISP and
return a list of pcAnywhere hosts waiting
for connections. You can also get the IP

www.DITnet .co.ae ■ www.pcmag -mideast.com April 2000 89