firewall issue or Lion incompatibility?

[ElectricMayhem]

I am behind a firewall that I don't control, trying to connect to a Mac OS X Lion 10.7.1 box over the internet with TightVNC and RealVNC.

I have port 80 on the internet side of my home router mapped to port 5900 on the server machine, and when I connect with a web browser I get "RFB 003.889" which I think indicates that I have connectivity. However, both the viewers I mentioned above fail to connect.

Is the likely problem that the firewall is filtering out VNC, or that I have a Lion incompatibility with my viewers?

[B]

Two things.

First, Apple massively screwed VNC users with Lion -- it's almost completely incompatible with 3rd party VNC clients, AND you can't install existing 3rd party VNC servers either.

Do a forum search here for "lion" and you should see the other threads on this.

Second, port 5900 is the VNC listening port (not its http/Java viewer delivery port) so it makes little sense to be forwarding port 80 to it or trying to connect to 5900 through a web browser. I don't even know that Lion's server includes the traditional Java viewer.

[ElectricMayhem]

Thanks for the fast reply. I am somewhat hobbled by the fact that I am behind a firewall that was set up by Nazis and blocks everything except port 80. I guess I am attempting to do VNC through this open port.

In particular, please understand that I am not attempting to do VNC through a web browser or use any kind of Java client; I only take the "RFB 003.889" response as meaning that I can successfully communicate with port 5900 on my Mac from port 80 on my work peecee through router port remapping.

The other technique I was going to try is an ssh tunnel over port 80.

[B]

Oh, okay. Well, obviously ssh would give you a lot more flexibility; you could run VNC as well as anything else you chose. Just by the way, if they're allowing port 80 without requiring a proxy (and your test has already confirmed that this IS the case) then that's a pretty half-assed security implementation for a nazi.

I'm assuming the port 80 restriction is on your work firewall, outbound, and that your home router is under your complete control, correct? (Do they not allow other outbound ports like 443 or 21? How do you hit SSL enabled sites?)

Anyhow, your assessment is correct and you have correctly forwarded your port. But I think that, for right now, you have to use an updated Apple-branded remote control program. At least some of the 3rd party VNC providers ARE working on Lion compatibility, but I don't know of any that are done yet. Perhaps RealVNC.

If you need to get working fast, I might suggest using LogMeIn Free.

[supercoe]

As B stated, most likely Lion incompatibility but...
Do you have another computer you can test the viewer with on your home LAN?

[ElectricMayhem]

Thanks for the helpful replies; it's much appreciated.

As a matter of fact, I can't connect to the Lion computer with any of my other Macs running Snow Leopard, not with the Lion built-in VNC server, and not with Apple Remote Desktop 3.51 either. So something else is going on. I am starting to wish that I had not "upgraded" to Lion. It's not an upgrade for any legitimate definition of "upgrade."