Troubleshooting:
The most common reason for Remote Desktop to not work is a misconfigured firewall or not having port forwarding setup properly. You need to make sure your firewall has an exception for Remote Desktop. Most of the time it will do it for you automatically. One of the other common reasons for Remote Desktop to stop working after it has been working, is if your public IP changes. Unless you have a business internet package, you IP will likely change from time to time. If this happens, you can just revisit this site to get your new public IP.
If after configuring your firewall and making sure the ports are properly forwarded on your router, you are still not able to connect to your machine, it just may not be possible. Some places like Universities and apartment complexes put all of their users behind a single external IP. If this is the case, it will be impossible to make the packets forward properly to your machine. You may want to look at other solutions, like LogMeIn, that will help bypass the forwarding of ports. You can also create a VPN using Hamachi that will allow you to connect with Remote Desktop. All of these solutions require you to have extra software installed on your machine.
Conclusion:
Remote Desktop is a great way to access the resources of your home computer remotely. It is like sitting in front of your computer at home. Don’t expect to be able to play any games though, as more than likely you won’t have enough bandwidth for that. The other obstacle is that DirectX (a component required for many PC games) is disabled on the remote machine when you remote in. Back in high school I would use a Remote Desktop session to bypass the school’s website filters, but I didn’t say that out loud. Whether your a Sys Admin trying to maintain servers or some kid trying to bypass web filters, Remote Desktop is an easy way to get it done.
In addition to above, you can access your computers remotely from anywhere using tools like on premise R-HUB remote support servers. It is an on premise solution with simple interface and works from behind the firewall, hence better security.
Thanks for letting me know about the Universities and Apartments issue. I knew I was doing it right. Looks like I’ll have to figure out something else…
I would certainly choose option c). If I were only using the feature now and then, I’d use the stock software that comes with windows. But I were a sys admin (I am) I would use some more robust remote access software to do this kind of thing on a daily basis. Personally i like proxy networks, but other options such as bomgar or logmein are also good.