In the first installment of discussing Remote Desktop, we covered how to set up a Mac to be accessed remotely and how to use a tool like Chicken of the VNC to access that computer over a local area network. To access the computer of the Internet is a tiny bit more complicated, but you've come this far.

First off, you need to know how to set up port forwarding on your router. This is usually a pretty simple process.

You can control multiple Macs from a single computer either locally or virtually over the Internet. It is easy and free. Best of all, it is platform independent, so if you want to control your Mac using a PC or Linux based computer you can (provided you can find a VNC client for your computer.) In this example, we will assume you are using a Mac to control a Mac.

First off, MacOS X has a built in firewall. You will need to turn it off to make this work.

1. Go to the Blue Apple Menu
2. Choose System Preferences
3. Choose Sharing
4. Choose the Firewall tab and turn it off

Secondly, you need to allow for Remote Desktop access on your target computer.