Cannot remote desktop from WAN, but can from LAN

First, make sure that the IP in your router's port forward is still the same IP that your Win XP Media Center Edition PC has been leased unless you have not set a reservation or given that PC a static IP.

It has to be related to the router/firewall since the remote desktop connection is working on the LAN side.

I'm also having this problem. Here are my symptoms - any help would be greatly appreciated:

Computer to be hosted is statically assigned 192.168.2.20, is connected to the router, and responds to LAN originating Remote Desktop requests (responds to both Computer name or IP based requests). Router is forwarding port 3389 requests (both TCP and UDP) to 192.168.2.20:3389.

If I try to Remote Desktop in from work (WAN) while watching the router log via it's web interface i see:

"TCP connection accepted to 192.168.2.20:3389 from 12.168.xxx.xxx:13136" (note: I've removed part of my IP address for obvious reasons).

The Remote Desktop Connection fails with this error message though:

"This computer can't connect to the remote computer.

Try connecting again. If the problem continues, contact the owner of the remote computer or your network administrator."

Anyone have any thoughts? I'm stumped...

What type of connection goes to the router? is it possible that the connection is being terminated or renewed with a new IP address if the ISP detects your connection is "quiet"? If your router supports it, try enabling a keepalive or manually do so with a ping/sleep/repeat batchfile

Thanks for the reply. The router is receiving a dynamic IP vie PPoE - but I'm using DynDNS.org to map the current IP address to a domain name (this way I won't have to check for the IP address every morning).

I monitored the WAN IP Address a few hours ago while attempting to Remote in... still can't connect and the IP address remained the same throughout the entire attempt (it did change about an hour later - on an unrelated note).

Some Corporate Firewalls (or Webfilters) will block this as some people attempt to bypass web filters by logging into their home PC and using a webbrowser from their. It could be that which is what is blocking you.