How to locate a computer over the internet

  • Thread starter Thread starter tmt
  • Start date Start date
T

tmt

I have a problem I don't seem to be able to get around. I have a few
friends/clients that I offer technical support. If they have dial up
internet access then I can simply tell them to dial the internet and
call me with their ip and I can find them using any number of tools to
initiate a connection and offer support.

If they use a broadband connection then I cannot get to them over the
internet. I just finished talking with someone o=in this situation.
She had a simple dsl connection but doesn't own her own ip address.
She is behind a sprint modem which does some type of NAT for her. Her
local ip reads 192.168.1.2 which is obviously a local ip. Thousands of
computers simply neding access to the internet use this addressing
scheme. I need to figure out either if I can access find the dsl modem
she is connected to and therefore find here or some other way of
finding a unique machine on the internet. It might be easier if she
were simply behind a firewall but I don't even know how to locate her.
Any help anyone can provide will be most appreciated.
 
Elementally.

There are tons of way to find out your public IP, but here is one,
click on the "Your IP address, IP whois" tool.

http://www.dslreports.com/tools

Now, since a broadband router is doing NAT, u need to configure the
target router to pass a "support call" from the public address to the
target private address.

With MS remote support, the user may be able to initiate the call, and
no special NAT config on this part is needed. I have not used MS
Remote Support so u will have a read the help file on that one.

that's it !
 
Have her send you an email and read the header for her public IP. The DHCP
server assigns an IP to her router and when she sends email that is the IP
used in the header.

Also, if she has access to the router configuration page it should show the
IP assigned to that router.
 
Back
Top