VNC FAQ-o-Matic : VNC and Firewalls : How can I get a VNC Viewer to connect through a firewall I don control?
Talk about a FAQ! Something very much like this appears at least once a week on the VNC mailing list: “I’m at a work on my office PC. It’s connected to a LAN that’s behind a firewall and a web proxy that I know nothing about. The IT guys setup my web browser and email so that they work. But, I have a VNC server running at home, and when I start a VNC Viewer and type in my VNC Server address, I get “connection failed” errors. How can I connect to it?” The usual first response to this is more instructional than helpful: if the IT guys at your workplace don’t allow VNC Viewers to work behind their firewall, they might have a really good reason. If you accomplish any “tricks” to bypass their security, you might just find yourself in hot water with your employer. So ask permission first. Once you have permission, the easiest way is do it like this: setup a SSH tunnel between your work PC and your home PC. Many SSH clients are HTTP-proxy aware, including the very popular PuTTY SSH client. Fo
