Topic: VPN ok, howto scan for VNC ??

[Damien Ryan]

Hi All,

I've got customers that I've set up VPN access to their e-smith box.
I then set up tight vnc on the client machines.

It all works like a charm, except for one thing.

As the customers e-smith gives local ip address at the client end, I can never be
sure what my clients local ip addresses are going to be
(do they change much ?), and after identifying a ip address that has
vnc running, I don't know how to find out the machine name so
I know I'm logging onto the right machine.

Do I have to allocate static IP addresses ?
(I'd like to avoid it if I can).
Or are there some nifty tools you can use to scan the local net
over the vpn connection and identify ip address, ports and hopefully machine names ?

How do others do it ?

Damien

PS Build a server recently for a client and just could not get the travan (segate)
tape drive going. Read the forums and discovered I wasn't alone.
I got a sony AIX tape drive and it's worked 5 out 5 test runs so far.
(thanks Kevin for your advise).

[Guck Puppy]

Damien Ryan wrote:

> Do I have to allocate static IP addresses ?
> (I'd like to avoid it if I can).
DHCP is by its nature Dynamic - but they shouldn't change that much unless there are a great deal of client machines requesting IP addresses.

> Or are there some nifty tools you can use to scan the local net
> over the vpn connection and identify ip address, ports and
> hopefully machine names ?
Yes - nmap. Is it installed by default? don't think so...

a quick google returns :
http://www.star-support.com/downloads/mitel/contrib/portscan/

[Jim Huneycutt]

Damien,
I use TightVNC version 1.2.8 on client machines in a similar VPN setup. I can connect the TightVNC viewer using just the machine name.

Of course I can also ping the client machine name to discover the ip address.

Perhaps I did not understand your problem.

jim

[Damien Ryan]

Thanks Jim,

I had not thought of that.

I'll try pinging the machine names tonight.

Damien

[Jan]

I use a program called VNCon. It scans the network for VNC clients.


// Jan

[moenster]

Hi

You can reserve IPs outside the DHCP scope. It still takes some administrative
effort, but at least the client machines are still set up for DHCP assigned IPs. So you can control the clients IPs from one location.

Regards Henrik

[Damien Ryan]

Hi all,

Reporting back.

(thanks Jim),
I tried using just the computer name, and this worked perfectly on a
site that has the e-smith box as the main gateway. I have a list of
all the computer names and their locations for that site, so I can easily
log on.

Another site of mine has a old NT box a the primary domain controller
and the e-smith box as the DHCP server and gateway.  I cannot use the
machine name it this case, (Presumably the e-smith box does not know
the actual machine names).

thanks Jan,
VNcon is a great tool. I tried it out and it works well over a VPN.
It doesn't give me machine names for the case above though.

So It looks like I'll try reserving IP address for this other site, or
investigate why e-smith does seem to know the machine names.

Damien

[Clive]

Why don't you set a long lease period for your DHCP. This what I do. say 2 weeks.
This works well if you have lots of spare addresses.