If your company’s network is connected to the Internet in an always-on fashion, then hopefully they have a software or hardware firewall in place. Assuming that they do, it will need to be configured to allow VPN or VNC traffic to enter the network and forwarded to the correct “server”, depending upon remote access solution chosen – by default, most firewalls are configured to stop all traffic originating from the Internet from entering the private network.
PPTP traffic, which is most commonly used for VPN connections, requires opening TCP port 1723 on the firewall, while VNC will require either 1 or 2 ports to be opened. Assuming that you want to use the VNC web browser capability, TCP ports 5801 and 5901 need to be opened on the firewall. If you’ll be using the VNC Viewer software only to connect, then only TCP port 5901 needs to be opened. As part of “opening” these ports, the IP address of the internal system to which the request should be forwarded will also need to be supplied.
If the person looking after your network is unsure of how to configure the firewall, have them check the documentation that came along with it – this type of firewall configuration is very common, but the actual steps to follow will differ depending on the model or software version of the firewall.
