Beginner VNC User - About to have a baby!

[Ralph Gaboury]

Hello:

My wife is about to have a baby (due 9/25), and I've been trying to figure out 
how to get VNC to work through my office's firewall so that I can work from 
home once the baby comes.  I've read through several dozen help articles, and 
postings to this list trying to figure it out, but the network and programming 
lingo is a little over my head.  Thanks in advance for putting up with my 
"Newbie" ignorance.  

Here's my set-up:

At work I have a Windows 98 PC, behind a firewall (VNC shows my "IP" as 192.168.
x.xx.  I read in a post that this definately means that I am behind a 
firewall).  I do not have administrative access to the firewall.  (I could 
request that certain changes be made, but it would be a long process, and 
probably wouldn't be approved of.)

At home, I have a Macintosh G4 running OS 10.1 (soon to be 10.2).  My 
Mac is hooked up to the Internet through a router (Netgear Websafe) hooked up 
to a cable modem (Motorolla Surfboard) -- I use a router because I am also 
using an Analog Telephone Adapter for the Vonage voice-over-Internet service 
(which works beautifully by the way - e-mail me with any questions you might 
have about Vonage).

I am trying to connect to my work PC from home.  From reading all the info I 
could on the Internet, I gleaned that one way to get this to work, would be to 
"tunnel" through my work firewall using SSH.  Questions on this:

1) Is there a free OpenSSH server program for Windows 98?

2) Can I install this on MY pc at work, or do I have to install this on the 
machine with the firewall (which would foreclose this option)?

3) If I can install an OpenSSH server on my pc, how do I do it, and properly 
configure it for my VNC connection(somehow, I doubt there is a nice installer 
program that does it all for you)?

4) I found an OpenSSH client for Mac OS X (although I'm having trouble opening 
the disk image for it).  Once I install that, how do I set up the SSH "tunnel" 
between my mac and my work pc?

4a)  Do I even have to install OpenSSH under OS X?  From what I understand, the 
Unix core of OS X already has OpenSSH incorporated into it.  If that's so, how 
do I access this and get it to create the "tunnel" to my work PC?

5) Once I set up the "tunnel," how do I tell the VNC client (which I found via 
Download.com) on my mac to connect to the VNC Server on my work PC?  (I think 
you type in localhost:1 or something similar to that)  

6)  Is there a way to hook up through an SSH secure tunnel using the the JAVA 
interface through a web browser, so that I could hook up no matter where I am 
(say, for example, from a web cafe)?

7) Do I have to change any of my router settings to get this to work (from 
reading the articles on the Internet, it doesn't look like it, since this would 
an outgoing connection -- I'll tackle opening ports on my router to connect 
from work at some point in the future).

Whew, thanks to whomever takes the time to read through all that, and to 
reply!  Although I like to think of myself as computer "savvy," this whole 
thing has made me feel like I know nothing!

Thanks again.

Ralph Gaboury


-------------------------
Ralph Gaboury
mail@RalphGaboury.com