I just installed PCAnywhere 10 on two computers in different locations. Both have DSL connections. I set one as the Host and set it to wait for a connection. I set the Remote on the other to connect to the IP address of the host PC. (I verfied the IP address with a probe website tool.)
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to connect to the Host. I clicked Connect, and it said “Waiting for connection…”, but eventually it said “Unable to connect to specified device”.
I suspect the problem is the Sygate firewall. I read somewhere that I should open a port. But, I can’t figure out how to do that. I’m pretty good with computers, but Sygate has be stumped.
Any ideas of what else the problem could be or suggestions of what I should do now?
There are a number of issues here. Is the Sygate a hardware device or a software firewall? If the latter is it on both machines or just one? What operating systems are they running?
Most importantly, do the computers have outside (routable) IP addresses, or do they have inside (nonroutable) ones. Checking a website will not tell you this. You can find out by going to Start|Run|WINIPCFG and selecting the network adapter in Win9x, or going to a command line in WinNT/2K/XP and typing IPCONFIG. If the address is a 10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x, or 172.16-32.x.x then it’s nonroutable. This will make things slightly more complicated.
You can view or change the ports pcAnywhere uses like this. The procedure to open these ports will depend on your answers to the above questions.
If your destination host has a public IP address, all you need to do is set your software to allow inbound connections on ports 5631 (TCP) and 5632 (UDP). There should be a web admistration feature on your firewall. Just open up IE and type the firewall IP address into your address bar. You should then be prompted for a username and password.
If your internal machine has a private IP address (most likely the case) you need to either the IP to a public one (NAT) or use port redirection on the firewall. I recommend the second option if supported. (i.e. all traffic coming in on ports 5631 and 5621 goes to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, your destination machine)