Connecting to a Campus System via VNC (Windows)

Overview

This tutorial is for members of Science seeking to establish a VNC connection to a campus PC/server without having VPN access.

Audience

This tutorial is written for:

  • Members of the Faculty of Science (faculty/staff/student)
  • Those comfortable with computers and installing/configuring software

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial, you must:

  • Have a PC or server on campus that is already configured for VNC connections (including having a VNC server enabled and the correct firewall ports open)
  • Know the hostname or IP address of the PC or server on campus to which you wish to connect
  • Have requested and been approved for access to gate.sci.uwo.ca

Tutorial

  1. Install TightVNC Viewer on your computer and launch it.
  2. In the left pane, expand the Connection and SSH nodes and select Tunnels
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  3. Populate the following fields, replacing mypc.uwo.ca with the hostname of the PC or server on campus to which you wish to connect
    Source port 9000
    Destination mypc.uwo.ca:5900

    The example above assumes you have a PC on campus named mypc.uwo.ca that is listening on the default VNC port of 5900.  If your VNC server is listening on a different display, you will need to modify this port number accordingly.  For example, to connect to display :1, you would choose port 5901.

    To connect to this host, you will connect to port 9000 on your home computer once the tunnel is established.

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  4.  Click Add.  The port mapping should appear under the Forwarded ports heading.
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  5.  In the left pane, scroll to the top and select Session.
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  6. Populate the following fields:
    Host Name gate.sci.uwo.ca
    Port 22
    Connection type SSH
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  7. Enter a descriptive name in the Saved Sessions field (such as My Campus PC) and click Save.
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  8. Double-click the session you created earlier in the Saved Sessions list to connect to gate.sci.uwo.ca.
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  9. When prompted, enter your Western username and password.  Note that you will not be able to see what you are typing when entering your password.
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  10. Leave the PuTTY window open and open the Start menu.  Search for TightVNC Viewer and launch it.
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  11. In the  Remote Host field, enter localhost:9000 and click Connect.
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  12. Enter the VNC password that you configured on your campus PC or server and click OK.

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  13. You should now be connected to the remote system via VNC. 
  14. When you are finished with your session, close TightVNC Viewer and switch back to the PuTTY window you left open.  Type exit and press Enter to log out.
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