Take Control of Screen Sharing in Leopard

Reverse Connect from a VNC Server to a Client

Both Chicken of the VNC and Vine Viewer support a useful option that allows a viewer to create a reverse connection to a server in cases in which the server can't be reached from outside the local network.

As I've elsewhere in this book, it's impossible to connect, over the Internet, to resources that are on machines using private IP addresses unless those machines are behind a router that has a public IP address or other special configuration options enabled.

With a reverse connection, the client turns into a kind of reverse server, allowing someone sitting at the remote computer to share their screen to the VNC client, as long as the VNC client has a publicly reachable IP address, of course.

This is ...