Here's my story. Once upon a time, our company used dial-up to access internet. (There are 3 computers in this story, 2 at work and one remote at home---all use Windows XP as OS). The 2 computers at work (A & B), connect to each other via Ethernet cards. Both had a phone line connected to internet line. I set up A as directly connecting to internet and B as connecting thru A. I connected from my computer at home (C) to A & B thru pcAnywhere. All was good, allbeit a slow. Then came DSL. We got it installed at work and at home this week. To my understanding, the way they have it installed at work is as follows: A & B are connected to Ethernet----Ethernet is connected to DSL modem, which connects to phone line for DSL. My computer (C) at home is connected directly to DSL modem. Now I cannot use pcanywhere to connect to work at all!! It seems I have done everything but stand on my head to get this to work!!! My questions are as follows: 1. Is having the dsl modem running thru ethernet to computers safe? Is it also causing these problems for me? 2. I have a Westell dsl modem, to which I can access its router service on net and choose a service on "pcanywhere hosting" to perform port forwarding, but is this what I want to do if I want to be the remote and make "A" or "B" be the host? 3. The computers at work connect thru an "Actiontech" modem. Could this cause the problem, since both modems are not the same, or perhaps "Actiontech" will not allow this type of connection at all??? As you can probably tell, I am totally lost on this one and so is everyone around me. The response I got from my ISP provider was "I don't know anything at all about all this stuff. Ask your computer administrator at work" . I am the computer adminstrator so he just told me to "Ask myself??!!??" As you can see, I am in serious need of help here!!! Any help at all would be greatly appreciated! Cindy (a.k.a. Hopelesslly Lost!!)

I'm not that familiar with PCAnywhere but it seems to me it should work. Is the IP address at work static or DHCP? If it's DHCP, that could be causing a problem as the address can change...rendering PCAnywhere unable to connect remotely. What you can do and what can likely solve all your problems is this: Buy two VPN capable 4 port highspeed internet routers...one for work, one for home. Get the IP at work changed to a static IP if it's not already. Once you have the equipment and static IP at work, plug the two work PC's into the router at work, enable it and set it up for a VPN connection. Do the same at home and set the VPN's on both to connect to each other. That should get everything working for VPN and provide firewall protection in both places.

The IP address is not the problem. I have work's IP address. They obtain it by going to "whatismyip.com". That gives them the ip address which I use to connect to them. I have set up port forwarding on my modem and had them to set up on theirs. Still I cannot access via pcanywhere nor can they connect to me. I had them to disconnect the ethernet from the dsl and connect computer directly to dsl. Still no good results. I have changed ports, went in and added a new service in my Internet connections Firewall with a pcanywhere tcp and udp service with the same ports as I have on pcanywhere. Still nothing. I can ping the ip address on my modem, but when I try to do it via telnet, it will not open the port. Does that mean that the port is closed? I thought setting port forwarding on my modem and theirs would open up the ports to be used. Any suggestions??

As far I have understood your problem, at home u have a DSL modem which is giving a valid public IP to your computer at home and u have a DSL router at work, which keeps the public IP to itself and gives private IPs to both the PCs. Now private IP's can't be accessed through Internet so u are running through problems. Try to set the IP address of one of your PC in DMZ zone in your dsl router and try it. That should work. revert back for more help. Navneet

I think Navneet is on the right track. It sounds like you have a NAT or a routing problem. The DSL router at work doesn't "know" what to do with traffic coming from IP address xyz (your IP address at home)Putting one of the work pc's in the DMZ would be a good test, but then it might leave that work pc vulnerable. You say your home firewall is configured for PC Anywhere, but is the work firewall configured to allow traffic to that port?