Remote Assistance in Vista

I have a novice running Vista Home Premium, behind a Linksys router that
passed all of the Vista tests.

When she creates a Remote Assistance invitation file, it does not contain a
public IP address about 90% of the time. Those fail, of course.

Why is this happening? Is there something that can be set or changed that
will help RA to always include the public address?

Is anyone having reliable success with RA invitation files created behind a
router?

Thanks

-Don

Hi Don,

By its very nature, the RA file uses the IP of the system on which it is
created. It can't possibly know any other as no other is available to the
system. The user will have to supply the helper with the IP that the router
gets from the outside world, this information is not conveyed to the
operating system.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

"dbir" <dbir@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:FF882202-6C72-420E-86C8-07A7AEFF9356@microsoft.com...
>I have a novice running Vista Home Premium, behind a Linksys router that
> passed all of the Vista tests.
>
> When she creates a Remote Assistance invitation file, it does not contain
> a
> public IP address about 90% of the time. Those fail, of course.
>
> Why is this happening? Is there something that can be set or changed that
> will help RA to always include the public address?
>
> Is anyone having reliable success with RA invitation files created behind
> a
> router?
>
> Thanks
>
> -Don

Hi Rick

Please see:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...technical.mspx.
(Expand the "RA Behind NAT..." question).

My friend's router is UPnP-compliant and passed all tests of the Vista
Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/usi...d/default.mspx..
Nevertheless, about 90% of all invitation files do not have the public IP
address, and fail to connect.

-Don

"Rick Rogers" wrote:

> Hi Don,
>
> By its very nature, the RA file uses the IP of the system on which it is
> created. It can't possibly know any other as no other is available to the
> system. The user will have to supply the helper with the IP that the router
> gets from the outside world, this information is not conveyed to the
> operating system.
>
> --
> Best of Luck,
>
> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
>
> "dbir" <dbir@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:FF882202-6C72-420E-86C8-07A7AEFF9356@microsoft.com...
> >I have a novice running Vista Home Premium, behind a Linksys router that
> > passed all of the Vista tests.
> >
> > When she creates a Remote Assistance invitation file, it does not contain
> > a
> > public IP address about 90% of the time. Those fail, of course.
> >
> > Why is this happening? Is there something that can be set or changed that
> > will help RA to always include the public address?
> >
> > Is anyone having reliable success with RA invitation files created behind
> > a
> > router?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > -Don
>
>

Hi Rick

I forgot to add: valid RA tickets that succeed have 5-digit port numbers
appended to both the private and public IP addresses. Yes, I can have my
friend get her public IP address from www.myipaddress.com, and hack it into
the ticket via Notepad. But without those port numbers, it will fail. If
Vista does not put the public IP address and port number it got via UPnP from
the router into the ticket, it will fail, and I can find no way to manually
get that data.

If anyone knows of a command line or something that would cause Vista to get
that data from the router and display it to me, I'd sure love to hear about
it.

-Don


"Rick Rogers" wrote:

> Hi Don,
>
> By its very nature, the RA file uses the IP of the system on which it is
> created. It can't possibly know any other as no other is available to the
> system. The user will have to supply the helper with the IP that the router
> gets from the outside world, this information is not conveyed to the
> operating system.
>
> --
> Best of Luck,
>
> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
>
> "dbir" <dbir@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:FF882202-6C72-420E-86C8-07A7AEFF9356@microsoft.com...
> >I have a novice running Vista Home Premium, behind a Linksys router that
> > passed all of the Vista tests.
> >
> > When she creates a Remote Assistance invitation file, it does not contain
> > a
> > public IP address about 90% of the time. Those fail, of course.
> >
> > Why is this happening? Is there something that can be set or changed that
> > will help RA to always include the public address?
> >
> > Is anyone having reliable success with RA invitation files created behind
> > a
> > router?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > -Don
>
>