Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

Connecting from the Road

You can also connect to your Mac's regular File Sharing feature (Chapter 13) from over the Internet. This feature is a blessing to anyone who travels, whether with a laptop or to a branch office, because you'll never be up the creek without a paddle if you discover that you left an important file at home.

The easiest way to go about it is to use Back to My Mac (Screen Sharing with Back to My Mac), which is one of Apple's $100-a-year .Mac services.

If you'd rather spend time than money, though, you can set up a remote-file-sharing system on your own. Start by setting up the home-base Mac for file sharing, as directed in Chapter 13; then figure out your Mac's public IP address, as described in the box on Web Sharing.

Finally, once you're on the road, go online and proceed like this:

1. Choose Go → Connect to Server.

   The Connect to Server dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 22-4.

2. Type in the public IP address of the Mac to which you want to connect, and then click Connect (or press Enter).

   See the box on Web Sharing for a discussion of public vs. private IP addresses.

3. Enter your name and password, and then click Connect.

   From here, it's just as though you were connecting to another computer on your office network (Chapter 13), although it's a good bit slower. But when you're in Hong Kong and need a document from your Mac in Minneapolis, you may not care.

Figure 22-4. The ...